In Phil Lathroum's classroom, third-graders concentrate on their computer screens as they design mail trucks and delivery vans.
When the designs are perfected, a three-dimensional printer will turn their visions into tangible models that will be added to a table-top city they're building as they study communities.
Lathroum's students at St. Philip Neri School in Linthicum are old hands at 3-D printing, thanks to their teacher's insistence on trying out new technology. Soon, students at the rest of the Archdiocese of Baltimore's schools will have the same learning opportunity.
Archbishop of Baltimore William E. Lori said Tuesday that each of the Archdiocese's 48 schools will soon get a 3-D printer and lesson plans to help students use the technology in various classes. Thirteen schools will get 3-D printers this week in the first phase of the project.
"For a young person who grew up typing on a Smith-Corona typewriter, this is all pretty amazing," Lori said during a visit to St. Philip Neri.
Lori said the 3-D printers will help the Catholic schools' mission of preparing young people for the workforce and to become leaders in making the world a better place.
The third-graders' study of communities is an example of how 3-D printing aids the evolution of learning, said Barbara Edmondson, superintendent of schools for the archdiocese. Where students once would have made shoe box dioramas to cap their unit on communities, now they're using math and problem-solving skills to design buildings and vehicles, then creating 3-D scale models. They'll paint the models in art class.
"These are truly 21st-century skills," she said.
The money for the printers — estimated to be about $250,000 — comes from a capital campaign that raised $150 million. About one-third is designated for the church's schools.
The archdiocese has 25,000 students in schools in Baltimore City and Baltimore, Anne Arundel, Howard, Harford, Carroll, Frederick, Washington and Allegany counties.
Catholic schools are not alone in integrating 3-D printers into the curriculum. Anne Arundel County's public schools, for example, have about a dozen 3-D printers and the school system is working to buy more, said a system spokesman, Bob Mosier.
Lathroum, who teaches technology and music classes, said the 3-D printing and design software gets students interested in technology and engineering. "This sucks them in," he said.
He said it's important to integrate new technology into the school day. He noted that children often have smartphones, iPods and computer tablets.
"What do you do when they come to school? You take it away from them," he said.
St. Philip Neri eighth-grader Carla Vega-Diaz of Severn said she's intrigued with how 3-D printers have been used in the medical field to create arm casts, back braces and prosthetics. And it's pretty cool, she said, to know that she uses equipment similar to what astronauts have used on the International Space Station.
"It's been a good experience to have this here," she said.
As students worked on their vehicle designs at St. Philip Neri, Lathroum used the 3-D printer to make a small replica of the University of Notre Dame's Hesburgh Library — famous for its "Touchdown Jesus" mural, depicting Christ with his arms raised — for Jim Sellinger, the archdiocese's chancellor of schools.
Sellinger, a Notre Dame alumnus, leaned in close and watched the printer lay down layer after layer of green material to build the library.
"This is slick," he said.
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