Science & Tech - Sculptris

Teaching students skills that will be relevant when they are adults can be tough. As teachers we spend a lot of time theorizing what skills will make current students marketable, employable, and successful. That often means exploring uncommon areas of technological learning. 

One big aspect of our technology time is learning about tools used for 3D printing. One of the programs we have grown to love is Sculptris. It's a 3D sculpting program using computers. Sounds easy but the mechanics are complex.

Masked as an art program, Sculptris actually provides a lot of opportunities for developing tech schools. Students learn how to :  

-recognize file types associated with 3D printing

- saving and sharing documents into shared drives

- use of rendering programs for design and coloring

- visualization of objects with multiple dimensional

This type of modeling and rendering are used in various fields ranging from movies to merchandising. 

Here are a few samples of our work so far.

The Speed of Neurons

Science, science, and more science. We can never get enough of it. 

This little flashback moment was from the first day of school. No sense in waiting to get us started. We had a guest teacher, Mr. Cory, who was a long time Seabury staff member. Mr. Cory taught about the speed of neurons. We tried to calculate the speed of the electrical current that moved through our bodies.

These simple movement experiments were designed to illustrate the speed at which our bodies transmit data through action and reaction.

We used connections through our feet and wrists, or elbows or hands to represent the neuron pathways.

 Then we calculated the speeds and averages. Math and science in one lesson?! Hard to beat that.

It was a great lesson that spanned topics of pyschology, biology, math, and electricity. Integrated sciences at their best! A bit thanks to Mr. Cory for his hard work.

- Mr. B