Middle school students at Pennsylvania's Upland Country Day School were invited to compete in the Edu-Tech Middle School 3D Challenge 2015, with students in both the 4th and 5th grades submitting designs to the contest, in which the grand prize will be a MakerBot Replicator 2 3D printer. A project from the 5th graders tackled a real-world problem, bringing their geography studies together with their growing tech knowledge, as the team designed a water collection device to harvest and filter rainwater in Africa. Students designed their water collector in Tinkercad and printed it on the school's MakerBot Replicator 2, creating a video documenting their design process from sketches on paper to popsicle stick models to the final 3D prints. Read about the students' work in the full story: http://3dprint.com/67099/ucds-3d-printer-challenge/


Below is a photo of 5th graders comparing their popsicle stick model to their Tinkercad rendering: