Audio Transcript

Published: 16 July 2017
APA 7 Citation: Newsome, B. (Host). (2017, July 16). Teaching design thinking with Makers Empire [Audio podcast transcript]. Fizzics Education. https://www.fizzicseducation.com.au/podcast/fizzicsed/teaching-design-thinking-with-makers-empire/

Ben Newsome CF is the recipient of the 2023 UTS Chancellor’s Award for Excellence and a Churchill Fellow. He is a global leader in science communication and the founder of Fizzics Education.

[00:00:00]
Announcer: You’re listening to the Fizzics Ed Podcast. For hundreds of ideas, free experiments and more, go to fizzicseducation.com.au. And now, here’s your host, Ben Newsome.

[00:00:17]
Ben Newsome: If you’re like me, you love your EdTech, and I’ll tell you what, you’d have to be just about living under a rock if you didn’t know about 3D printing. And that’s okay if you didn’t know about it; you’re certainly going to learn about it this time. Our next guest, Mandi Dimitriadis, is from Makers Empire, and they’ve made an entire business out of 3D printing—not selling the printers, but creating the software and teaching people how to actually use the software well, even at a kindergarten age. 3D printing is certainly fun, and guess what? We even talk about 3D printing chocolate, and who wouldn’t love a bit of that?

[00:00:56]
Ben Newsome: This is the Fizzics Ed podcast. Yes, welcome again to another Fizzics Ed podcast. My name is Ben Newsome and I’m really glad to bring you Mandi Dimitriadis. She is the Director of Learning Improvement at Makers Empire, a startup in 3D printing out of Adelaide. However, they’ve certainly started up in a big way. These people are doing a heap of work with schools in not only Australia but also in New York and even into China. Not with developing the 3D printers, but actually developing software that kids can genuinely use.

[00:01:28]
Ben Newsome: I hope you get a lot out of this. I certainly did. It was really fascinating to talk with Mandi about how she’s been working with students and teachers to get the best out of the learning environment for 3D printing. And it really is important for kids to learn how to solve problems in a real way. We even talk about how kids can actually design a prosthetic limb using the 3D printing software that Makers Empire developed. Fantastic, and seriously, they really, really did. So, I hope you enjoy this, and I certainly enjoyed it too. Check it out.

[00:01:54]
Announcer: This is the Fizzics Ed podcast. Why don’t you book us for a science show or workshop for your school? We love seeing students get excited about science, and you will too. Go to fizzicseducation.com.au and click on “Schools” for more information.

[00:02:10]
Ben Newsome: Mandi Dimitriadis, thank you very much for coming on the Fizzics Ed podcast.

[00:02:14]
Mandi Dimitriadis: My pleasure. Thank you for having me.

[00:02:16]
Ben Newsome: I’m really excited about this because this area that you work in has exploded in the last couple of years. But I must say, there’d be some people who don’t know who you are and what you do. So, let us know what you do.

[00:02:31]
Mandi Dimitriadis: So, I am currently working as the Education Director for Makers Empire. But I’m really a primary years teacher. I started life as a primary years teacher, worked in junior primary and special education, and also spent a lot of time in museum education. More recently, I was working for the Department of Education in South Australia on a range of pedagogy and curriculum roles, and it was while I was working in those roles that I met the guys from Makers Empire and got really excited about what they were doing. Eighteen months later, I’m still with them and having an awesome time.

[00:03:07]
Ben Newsome: So you’ve done lots of cool things. Education takes you to some wonderful places, wonderful people, kids, families. Certainly, I definitely want to deep dive right into what Makers Empire is all about, and those people might be wondering what that’s about. It is about 3D printing and all that type of thing. But you did say a couple of things that I’d like to just find out a bit more about, purely because I’ve just found it out now. You used to work in museums. Tell me more.

[00:03:31]
Mandi Dimitriadis: So, I worked mostly at the Maritime Museum in South Australia, where I ran the education programmes and worked with all the schools that visited the museum, took them out on historic boats and up the lighthouse, and into the museum to learn about mostly the maritime history of South Australia and migration and those kinds of things. So that was a pretty cool job.

[00:03:57]
Ben Newsome: Oh fantastic. We’ve actually got an interview coming up with the Australian National Maritime Museum.

[00:04:00]
Mandi Dimitriadis: Oh, one of my favourite places.

[00:04:02]
Ben Newsome: It is an awesome place. I took my kids there only a couple of weeks ago. It was really hard to pull them out of there, to be honest. And I’ve also got some friends at the Maritime Museum out of Virginia.

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Mandi Dimitriadis: Oh, yes, I think I’ve connected with them too when we were looking at doing some programmes via video conferencing. They do that awesome programme with the spices across the world.

[00:04:22]
Ben Newsome: They absolutely do. It’s amazing who you can meet around the planet. And that’s really why I want to have a chat with them because yes, you can teach a lot of science through the maritime area. It’s fantastic. But I probably should do, I really want to cover what you’re currently doing. Let’s get back to the present. And for those people who are listening before, yes, we do go on tangents, it will happen. Anyway, so you’ve been heavily involved with Makers Empire. Now I know exactly who Makers Empire is, but there’ll be some people who don’t know you at all. Tell us more about Makers Empire.

[00:04:55]
Mandi Dimitriadis: Well, Makers Empire is a company based in Adelaide, but we’ve now worked with thousands of schools and teachers around the world, particularly the primary and middle-age group, to get started with 3D design and 3D printing in their classrooms. Makers Empire was founded by four friends, four guys that met each other at school and university in Adelaide. And then they all went off on tangents, went off to do different things around the world. We’ve got a game developer who worked in Scotland for a long time; we’ve got people with business, accounting, and web design backgrounds. So they all reached a time in their lives where they wanted to start their families and they wanted to come back to South Australia.

[00:05:41]
Mandi Dimitriadis: One of the guys, the game developer, Roland, had at the time a four-year-old daughter. And he noticed that whenever he gave her the iPad to use, all the activities and programmes she could do were her responding to something that was already there. So, matching shapes and so on, but not a way for her to be creative. So he got to wondering whether he could design something that a four-year-old could use to be creative. At the same time, these friends had reunited and they’d bought a 3D printer because they were, to tell the truth, a little bit geeky. They were intrigued with what a 3D printer could do. So those two things came together and Makers Empire was born with really easy-to-use software that helps young people to create things that are 3D printable.

[00:06:30]
Mandi Dimitriadis: And then the company evolved from that to needing to find a purpose for designing and printing. So they realised pretty soon that they needed to position this in education. That it wasn’t really about the printing, it was about students having access to these tools to be creative, to solve problems, to make their own stuff.

[00:06:53]
Ben Newsome: That’s right. I mean, those people, if you haven’t been onto makersempire.com, you should check out some of the stuff they’ve done. One of the things that really grabbed my eye, and I thought this is just fantastic, is this video where kids are trying to solve the problem of dealing with a prosthetic limb.

[00:07:10]
Mandi Dimitriadis: Yes, that’s right. We’re constantly inspired by ways that 3D printing is being used around the world to solve real problems really cheaply and easily. It was actually a group of students that had looked at the work that e-NABLE does around the world making prosthetic limbs. They’d also got to know their teacher’s child, who was two years old at the time and has cerebral palsy. And this little girl every morning has to have her legs strapped with these quite laborious straps all the way up her legs. And the kids had taken this little girl out into the play yard to play, and they noticed that these straps kept coming undone, they kept getting in the way, really annoying.

[00:07:55]
Mandi Dimitriadis: So, they got together, this was Year 6s, six Year 6s got together to think about what they could do. And they actually ended up designing some clips in Makers Empire, printed out a whole bunch of them, trialled them, tested them, and ended up with a plastic clip that holds these straps in place for Casey, the little girl. And to this day, a year later, she’s still wearing them and still able to play around without the straps getting in her way. So solving a real problem that mattered to someone they knew and cared about was pretty special.

[00:08:28]
Ben Newsome: What I love about this is it had nothing to do with assessment whatsoever. It was just, we’ve got to solve this.

[00:08:34]
Mandi Dimitriadis: It totally didn’t, Ben. But if you get the achievement standards out for Design and Technology, it ticked all the boxes at a really high level.

[00:08:44]
Ben Newsome: They would have smashed those. And to be honest, not only for their year group, probably right into middle high school.

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Mandi Dimitriadis: They totally did. In fact, I often use that example and show it to teachers first, and then get them to plot it on the achievement standards and it is off the scale. As well as all the other stuff that came in, all the general capabilities and the empathy and all of those things.

[00:09:05]
Ben Newsome: And this is actually really what this whole STEAM movement is. Okay, we could get into a debate of whether it’s called STEM or STEAM or whatever, but to be honest, this design thinking is critical because when kids are motivated to solve a problem they care about, gee, they do a good job with it.

[00:09:21]
Mandi Dimitriadis: They totally do. And to me, those kids developed lots of skills in terms of design and so on, but they also now know that if they work together and bring their skills together, they can actually solve problems that matter to them. So to me, that STEM or STEAM is about the disposition and belief in yourself that you can actually solve problems. You can be not just a problem solver but a problem seeker. So if you see another kid like Casey or something completely different, if you follow the processes and work together, you can do something pretty cool.

[00:09:55]
Ben Newsome: Well that’s the thing about this with these schools getting involved. I mean, this is not like one or two schools or three schools, I mean this 3D printing is really a movement.

[00:10:06]
Mandi Dimitriadis: It totally is, yes. I guess 3D printers have been around for quite a long time now and we’re seeing great applications in industry, particularly medicine and engineering design. And we’ve also seen 3D printers in high schools for a while, but they tend to be in the tech studies workshop and they’re the domain of the senior years teacher and students with high-level CAD. But what’s really exciting for us at Makers Empire is that primary schools or elementary schools are starting to sit up and take notice and see that their students can also benefit by bringing this 3D technology into the classroom. So that’s really taking off.

[00:10:44]
Ben Newsome: Well if we can just walk our listeners through, what would happen, like okay of course you could do the Year 10, Year 11 type course and of course they’re going to do some high level stuff. But just walk us through, what would it look like for a Year 2 student or a Year 3 student doing this type of work?

[00:11:00]
Mandi Dimitriadis: Well, to start with, Makers Empire has really easy to use 3D design software. And when we say it’s easy to use, what that means is the functionality and the look and feel are really designed for the 5-to-12 age group. So perfect for Year 2. But the other thing that happens is all the technical things that happen when you’re designing in CAD are still there, but they’re happening behind the scenes. So we’ve kind of taken that high level need to have technical skills out of there. So everything you create in Makers Empire is 3D printable. So that Year 2 student would obviously come on and get to know the software. We’ve got avatars and all of those kind of things that make it really engaging.

[00:11:46]
Mandi Dimitriadis: But then they can bring what they understand about shapes and moving from a 2D to a 3D space. They, for example, might just create a snowman as their first project by putting different spheres together, adding some eyes and so on. And that’s what Makers Empire enables you to do. If you can put shapes together, you’ve created a 3D object. Simple as that.

[00:12:09]
Ben Newsome: I’m so sorry, I was kind of laughing because I was thinking as they build a snowman you need a Frozen soundtrack or something. And all the parents just go, “No!” as they walk to the car. “Please don’t talk about Frozen ever again.” Look, my daughter’s eight and we went through the Frozen time, but anyway.

[00:12:28]
Mandi Dimitriadis: Yes, I have an eight-year-old niece with a Frozen bedroom. So yes, I totally get that.

[00:12:33]
Ben Newsome: Look, kids would love this because I mean, I have seen this software in action and dragging and dropping these different 3D structures together seems so implicitly simple.

[00:12:40]
Mandi Dimitriadis: Yes, it is, it is simple.

[00:12:43]
Ben Newsome: It’s brilliant. And so I kind of wonder that one of the barriers, I mean probably the barrier, perceived or real, for doing this type of stuff in schools… well actually you know what, you’d know the barriers. You’re the one who deals with this every day. So what are the sort of questions that you tend to get about, from teachers or educators in museums or whatever, about how do I get this going in my classroom? What are the barriers?

[00:13:07]
Mandi Dimitriadis: Okay, I guess there’s a number of barriers. One of them would be to do with the technology, so having a 3D printer in the classroom. So I guess from a safety aspect, if I talk about that one first…

[00:13:19]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, go for it.

[00:13:20]
Mandi Dimitriadis: One of the things that Makers Empire has done, we don’t actually sell 3D printers, but every time a new one comes on the market, the guys buy it because they like new toys and they test it out. So they’re actually really well placed to give non-biased advice about 3D printers that work well in classrooms. We’ve also got our head around all the different safety guidelines for different education departments and so on.

[00:13:45]
Mandi Dimitriadis: Our offices are part of a creative hub, so we’re in an old church that has all different small businesses in creative fields, so music, app development and so on. And there’s an old, almost industrial kitchen, because this church was also used as a nightclub function centre. So out the back there’s an old kitchen, and we have all along the benches and workspaces all our 3D printers lined up. So it’s quite a hub.

[00:14:17]
Mandi Dimitriadis: So, we’ve actually found that you can now get 3D printers that are really portable and safe. And by safe, I mean that they are enclosed, so they look a little bit like a microwave or a coffee machine, so all the workings are enclosed. Which is kind of a little bit sad because it’s cool to see the whole thing working, but it does make it safe. They also have filters so any particles are sucked up into the air, and they use non-toxic plastic. Because 3D printers, I’m not sure if people know, they print all sorts of materials from precious metals like gold to artificial skin and cement.

[00:15:00]
Mandi Dimitriadis: But the printers that you’re likely to be able to afford to use in a school print with different types of plastic. And the plastic that is recommended for a primary school setting is non-toxic. It’s made from cornstarch rather than petroleum, and it’s biodegradable, so it’s a really environmentally friendly and kid-friendly way to print. So you can bring a printer… the printers that we use that we’re recommending at the moment are about eight to nine hundred dollars. You can carry them around, they’ve got a handle, bring them into any classroom and they just work. You don’t even need to put them near a window or exhaust fan. So that takes the whole worry about it being really dangerous out, and it’s something everybody can use. Literally if you can use a microwave, you can use these.

[00:15:46]
Ben Newsome: Well absolutely right. I mean, obviously everyone’s got their budget in their school, of course, but it is accessible. It’s less than the cost of a whole bunch of robots to go into a school or whatnot. But even if you didn’t want to get it, I mean the fact that you guys have this facility in the back of a church…

[00:16:07]
Mandi Dimitriadis: Yeah. And I guess the other thing I’d say, Ben, is that you don’t even need a printer because really the learning happens with design and trying things out and coming up with ideas, and there’s so much there. And even if you do want to print, you can outsource it. So there’s increasingly 3D printing hubs and libraries and even some office works that will print your design for you.

[00:16:28]
Ben Newsome: Just out of interest about that, have you had… obviously you do a lot of work with schools, but just going down this path, libraries and maker spaces, I mean that is a big thing and growing.

[00:16:40]
Mandi Dimitriadis: It is, and that’s where our key audience is primary schools, but we get a lot of inquiries from public libraries and school libraries setting up maker spaces. And a lot of them are including 3D printing and Makers Empire software is part of that. And what’s beautiful about that too is the maker spaces in community libraries are bringing in that cross-generational learning. So you’ve got little kids designing on Makers Empire and teaching in one case I saw a retired engineer who obviously had awesome ways of thinking and talking about making but hadn’t seen anything like this before. So you’ve got that awesome cross-generational link happening.

[00:17:22]
Ben Newsome: That’s brilliant because this is not just happening in Australia. I mean you guys are not quite global but gee, you’re getting close.

[00:17:30]
Mandi Dimitriadis: Yes, our core schools are in the US, China and Australia, and we also have a few in places like India and South Korea, Hong Kong.

[00:17:40]
Ben Newsome: Just wondering just out of interest, obviously Makers Empire, like any place that wants to work well with schools, of course you’re going to continue to grow and do good stuff. But the industry as a whole, 3D printing, design thinking, that type of thing, I mean I kind of wonder where do you think this is all going?

[00:17:56]
Mandi Dimitriadis: Well I think that design thinking is the key to so many things. And I know you said about in general, but when I think about our young students, we don’t know what the future is going to be like for them. I guess what we do know is it’s going to be changing all the time. So we really need our students to be equipped with the ability to adapt to change and be able to solve problems that we’ve never come across before in ways that we’ve never come across before. And I really strongly believe, and this is one of the core philosophies at Makers Empire, that if our students have ways of approaching change and new problems, then they’re going to be really well equipped with that. It’s not specific skills but it’s a way of thinking and being open to new ways of thinking and change.

[00:18:45]
Mandi Dimitriadis: And I think design thinking is one of the best ways of doing that. Having a process that you can really bring to any situation that you face. And it also, what design thinking does is helps us take a tricky situation or challenge and turn it into an opportunity. So turn it into an opportunity to explore ideas and test things out and solve problems, come up with new ways of doing things.

[00:19:09]
Ben Newsome: So what are some of the cool lessons that you’ve seen teachers produce? Like I mean, teachers are highly creative people, and I’d love to hear just what sort of things you’ve seen that have been teacher-led, that have been done by the teacher with their students.

[00:19:22]
Mandi Dimitriadis: Yeah, and when we were talking before about the challenges, and I went down the safety road, the other challenge is teachers feeling like they can use these 3D technologies in their classroom and that they actually have time to do that. It’s in a crowded curriculum, that these technologies actually can be part of the whole curriculum, not just technology. So I guess the great examples I’ve seen have been where the teacher has brought everything together. So almost like a project-based approach where the students are working through design, but they’re also bringing in lots of other areas.

[00:19:59]
Mandi Dimitriadis: So for example, in fact I was just watching a little video that a school made today. We have a school that we’re working with called Mundulla. It has 35 students, and it’s really close to the Victorian border in South Australia. And these 35 students heard about the local progress association put out a request, like a competition, to design a new entrance to the town. So the students, they’re all in the same class, they all worked together to explore this idea.

[00:20:30]
Mandi Dimitriadis: So this teacher took this up and thought this is a great opportunity. So an entrance as in “Welcome to Mundulla”. So the students went out to the different road entrances in the town. They did lots of measurements, they thought about road safety. Things like if we design an entrance, we don’t want it to distract drivers and have people running off the road. So what’s too much and what’s just right? And then they were also measuring angles and so on about where would we need to position our artwork or sculpture so that people coming in can see it.

[00:21:04]
Mandi Dimitriadis: And then they went back to school and they used Makers Empire to create their different designs. And they were thinking about how would they communicate what’s important to Mundulla. So they were thinking about history, they were thinking about industry, things that are important to the area today. And then they were working… so these are students from five to 12 years old, then worked together to create these 3D printed prototypes, took them to council, and now the council are working with the kids to design this entrance to the town. So awesome example, bringing in the community and bringing in all the learning areas. It had everything in that example.

[00:21:45]
Ben Newsome: It’s just better than real life, that’s just awesome. And obviously that’s a proper jump into it, like that’s really going there. I love it. I mean of course there’d be some people that’d be a bit tentative. They know they want to do it but they’re not too sure how to start. How do you help those people?

[00:22:04]
Mandi Dimitriadis: Makers Empire is really designed for people just getting started. So when you get into Makers Empire, we have a whole lot of support structures to support kids and teachers to get started. So we have challenges set into the software. So Makers Empire, really easy to use software with a challenge module that guides you through using our different design tools and gradually introducing you to different ideas. So that’s a way that we support those teachers.

[00:22:42]
Mandi Dimitriadis: We also have quite an extensive library of lesson plan ideas. I think we’re, I’d like to say a hundred, I think it’s 92, but let’s say a hundred. So what our lesson plan library is, is a range of ideas that across the K to 8 level, all aligned to Australian Curriculum and US Common Core and so on. But they show how you, they’re ideas really about how you might align 3D printing or 3D design to different areas of the curriculum, and bring the design process into that. So they’re step-by-step lessons that some teachers might like to follow, or just go to this library to get ideas.

[00:23:22]
Mandi Dimitriadis: And there’s a whole range of things there, things like the example that jumps to my mind is a lesson for Year 1 level where students design and print their own bubble wands, and it’s a step-by-step how you might do that in Makers Empire. And then of course they use their bubble wands to make observations about bubbles and bringing in the light and all those science aspects from the Year 1 curriculum.

[00:23:48]
Ben Newsome: That’s awesome. And I also know you’ve been working on a number of different versions of professional development as well, which is really handy if you’re in a classroom just going, “Look, I just need to get this going properly.”

[00:23:57]
Mandi Dimitriadis: Yeah totally. All of our new schools that come on board get a two-hour session to make sure that they are feeling, the teachers are feeling confident and happy and know how to use everything. And then we have a range of other professional development that we can offer. Because really one of the key things to integrating educational technology is teacher confidence. So that’s why we’ve gone down that track. And that’s where I come in really, apart from 92 lesson plans, I work with our new schools and help them to come on board successfully. Yeah.

[00:24:30]
Ben Newsome: Wow, so what do you think the future for Makers Empire itself is going to be? Like it’s obviously a hard one, that is a weird question because what could that be?

[00:24:40]
Mandi Dimitriadis: Our vision is really about accessibility. We would love every child in the world to be able to access Makers Empire and be a 3D designer and have it as one of their tools. So not just 3D printing is the new thing that we’re doing this year, and next year we’re onto coding or robotics, but have 3D design and 3D printing as one of the tools that every child has access to. So when they’re coming up with an idea or facing a problem, they might pick up their pencil, they might pick up their camera, or they might pick up some 3D design tools and have a go at designing something.

[00:25:21]
Ben Newsome: That’s fantastic. I mean there’s so much we can go ahead with this. And also if people are just interested about what can be done in 3D printing in the real world in industry, I guess we could always just check out what’s on YouTube about there’s some fantastic things being made right now. What have you seen?

[00:25:34]
Mandi Dimitriadis: One of the stories that I’ve been excited about lately came out of an African country, I can’t remember which one, but somebody has developed a 3D printer that will print in mud. So this person is printing houses for people out of mud. So apart from his cost in developing and supplying this 3D printer, he’s producing houses for people in need for no cost at all. So that’s pretty awesome.

[00:26:05]
Mandi Dimitriadis: And then every day, amazing stories coming out of the medical field, like scientists have developed almost exactly human skin that can be 3D printed for burn victims and things like that.

[00:26:24]
Mandi Dimitriadis: And also I love the idea of bringing design and medicine and whatever else together, because I think this is part of what we want our kids to know, that if you bring a way of thinking, a design way of thinking, together with that collaborative way of thinking, so if I’ve got a problem, if I find people and processes to help me, we can solve it together. Awesome examples around that.

[00:26:51]
Mandi Dimitriadis: And one of them that jumps to mind is something I read about with some conjoined twins. And the surgeon worked together with a 3D designer and they actually 3D printed a model of the section of the two babies’ bodies that were joined. So that enabled the surgeon to practice and to work out the best way to separate these twins before he even touched them. So when you think about what that must have done for ensuring a much more successful outcome and less intrusive, was pretty awesome. And it worked, by the way.

[00:27:23]
Ben Newsome: What I love about this is it can go from the real life-changing examples, I mean building houses in Africa through to medicine, I mean that’s fantastic, all the way through to the outright frivolous. I mean I watched you do a lesson once and you were mentioning printing with chocolate.

[00:27:38]
Mandi Dimitriadis: Absolutely. In fact Hershey’s have brought out a printer that’s now available at the consumer level, where you can design anything you like. You could even scan your body and print yourself out in chocolate. And as you say, that’s not going to solve any world problems, probably create a few, but it’s pretty awesome.

[00:27:57]
Ben Newsome: Hello to all your chocoholic makers out there!

[00:28:02]
Ben Newsome: No, well actually as a side note, and this is a completely little side, I actually read a great article, I think it was in New Scientist or was it Cosmos magazine, about the 4000 odd different chemicals that are found within chocolate.

[00:28:13]
Mandi Dimitriadis: Oh my goodness.

[00:28:15]
Ben Newsome: Yeah there are, seriously, it’s not just theobromine, the main part which makes people go “Oh that is chocolate, that is the flavour”. There are a lot of antioxidants involved and there are some good benefits to chocolate, especially the dark stuff. I must say I’m a dark chocolate person, not so much the white chocolate, but hey we’ve all got our flavours.

[00:28:40]
Mandi Dimitriadis: I believe dark chocolate washed down with red wine, isn’t that right?

[00:28:44]
Ben Newsome: Ok so that’s a lesson plan for tonight for what you’re teaching.

[00:28:47]
Mandi Dimitriadis: I don’t know how I’ll get that into the K to 8 age group.

[00:28:51]
Ben Newsome: Maybe on the tertiary level.

[00:28:54]
Ben Newsome: Oh look fantastic. Well thank you very much for coming along. I mean it’s been a real pleasure. It’s a pleasure to have a chat with you, especially when you’re so busy dealing with all these schools across Australia, US, and China, it’s hard to grab your time. But obviously there’s going to be some people here who are stoked to get involved with Makers Empire. What would you say would be their first steps?

[00:29:17]
Mandi Dimitriadis: Well I would suggest hopping onto our website and having a look at what we do. So that’s makersempire.com. And one of the things you can do there is sign up for a demo. So we run regular demo sessions where we can walk you through everything we’ve got. So a demonstration of our easy to use software and also the resources to support teachers, so the lesson plans and our management tools and PD and all of those things.

[00:29:50]
Mandi Dimitriadis: So definitely hop onto makersempire.com, and you can also download our Makers Empire software. So either through the App Store or at makersempire.com. The software works on all platforms, so Mac, PC, Android phones, iPads, etc. So hop on and have a play, look at those challenges I was talking about.

[00:30:07]
Ben Newsome: Absolutely. So what we’ll do is we’ll hook that all up in the show notes as well so people can click and go find out more as much as they want to do.

[00:30:14]
Mandi Dimitriadis: Fabulous, please do that.

[00:30:16]
Ben Newsome: Thank you very much Mandi, much appreciated, and no doubt you’re going to have to go run off to a school!

[00:30:21]
Mandi Dimitriadis: Yeah I actually do.

[00:30:22]
Ben Newsome: I knew it, so I had to make sure I was right on time. Much appreciated and we might catch up another time.

[00:30:28]
Mandi Dimitriadis: I’d love to do that.

[00:30:30]
Ben Newsome: All the best. Thanks a lot.

[00:30:31]
Mandi Dimitriadis: Thanks Ben, bye.

[00:30:35]
Announcer: This is the Fizzics Ed podcast. We’re all about science, ed tech and more. To see 100 fun free experiments you can do with your class, go to fizzicseducation.com.au. That’s physics spelt F-I-Z-Z-I-C-S, and click “100 free experiments”.

[00:30:52]
Ben Newsome: Thanks so much Mandi for coming on the Fizzics Ed podcast. I know you do a lot of work with your team on making sure that the software you’ve created is usable for kids. I mean, it’s too easy to create a software package and send it out to the world and just go, “You know what, that’s how it’s going to be.” You guys work very hard in making sure that your lessons genuinely work at all types of curriculum levels. And really well done. I’d love to just go through some of the takeaways that I grabbed from this interview and perhaps you as a listener might have other ones as well. And hey, throw them in the comments, please do so. It’s always good to know what you’re taking out from these podcasts.

[00:31:31]
Ben Newsome: So for me, lesson number one for me was, if you’re an education app developer, maybe consider making the software easy to use. I know that seems odd to say that because as a developer of course you want your software to be easy to use. But think of it from the user perspective. Especially think about what it’s like to use your software if you are six years old. I mean, imagine if you were six years old and you’re trying to use a piece of software where it’s asking you to do things that you can’t read, and it’s asking you to do numbers that you can’t really add up or multiply. It gets really difficult, let alone trying to think about a 3D environment, a spatial environment, which is hard to get your head around at the best of times. And obviously Makers Empire did a very good job with this.

[00:32:12]
Ben Newsome: Secondly, if you are again working in education app development, and you’re working with schools, please consider taking the time to create some professional learning opportunities for teachers. Teachers really, really, really want to be able to work with you and make sure that the lessons that they want to do certainly fit with what your app can do. So professional learning opportunities aren’t just about you showing off what your software can do; it’s a two-way street. Teachers know a lot about what actually works and what doesn’t work in their classrooms, and it’s a real opportunity for you as an app developer to listen to teachers’ requests and requirements. It certainly can help.

[00:32:46]
Ben Newsome: And maybe consider creating a suite of background notes for teachers to use, and they’ll especially love you if you link it to the curriculum in your country. And also, maybe consider working out how it can work with curriculums in other countries too.

[00:33:04]
Ben Newsome: Finally, if you’re a teacher, consider 3D printing as part of your overall teaching plan. Now let’s be honest, not everyone can afford 3D printers up front. Let’s just be honest, some are just too expensive for certain environments, and we totally understand that. However, if you can get a download of the software from Makers Empire, at least the kids can experience creating stuff within a 3D environment. And from there, maybe you could pair with another school to perhaps co-purchase a 3D printer, or in the case of Makers Empire, I know that if you get in touch with them, you can probably create your software where they can print something off for you at a small cost. So there are a couple of different ways this can be done. Don’t think about cost as being a barrier for kids to be able to at least understand what happens in 3D printing and why this is potentially a game changer when it comes to the future.

[00:33:56]
Announcer: Thanks for listening to the Fizzics Ed podcast. Love your science? We do too. Here’s this episode’s education tip of the week. Grab your pencil and get ready to make some notes.

[00:34:07]
Ben Newsome: So for this week I’d like you to consider getting kids to go back to basics and make a science poster that really communicates something they really are passionate about and care about and they want to tell the world about. So let’s see if we can go through some of my six tips for kids creating a great science poster that really works.

[00:34:26]
Ben Newsome: Number one: Make the content obvious. I mean, that’s pretty obvious, right? Make the content obvious. But sometimes you look at a science poster in a classroom and you go, “What are you trying to actually tell me?” So yeah, get the kids to really make the illustrations and the fonts clear and everything really obvious.

[00:34:44]
Ben Newsome: And that actually brings us to number two: Font size matters. Sometimes when you look at science posters created by kids, they’ve got tiny little itty bitty writing and you can’t really see it unless you’re really, really close. Really, you should be able to see what the content is about, especially if you can stand back five, maybe even ten metres in your classroom. That actually forces kids to think very carefully about the content they’re going to put on their science poster that will communicate their message effectively. Which means they’re going to have to learn to edit and cull it.

[00:35:20]
Ben Newsome: And that actually is important. And when it comes down to not only editing, you’ve got to edit your content so that… Number three: The content works with your audience. Who is this science poster designed for? Is it for the kids in the room? Is it for the teacher in the room? Especially if it’s for an assessment—yes, you’re going to have to hit a mark—but it doesn’t always have to be about a mark. It could be about, are you communicating an idea in your science poster for a parent night? Or for a science festival perhaps? Know your audience. How educated is the audience? What is their background? What would make the audience want to read the science poster in the first place?

[00:35:50]
Ben Newsome: And number four: Tip number four. More imagery, less words. No one likes really a block of text. It really doesn’t help much. And especially, like I said before, the font is really, really small, you don’t want to do that. Get some images that sing, that really show what is it that you’re trying to communicate. It can really help.

[00:36:10]
Ben Newsome: Now number five, which is often missed, is acknowledgements. Acknowledge where you got your source of information. What are your references? Especially as you go further and further through school and then into university, you need to acknowledge your source of information, otherwise people can actually question you and say, “Well, are you just making stuff up or is there some actual background and research to what you’re doing?”

[00:36:31]
Ben Newsome: And finally, sixth tip, when you’re making a science poster, sometimes simple is best. And isn’t that really key for everything? So there you go. Jump onto a simple project this week, get your kids considering putting a science poster together that really sings.

[00:36:48]
Announcer: This is the Fizzics Ed podcast. We’re excited about science. Grab a copy of our new book, “Be Amazing: How to Teach Science the Way Primary Kids Love”, from our website. Just search “Be Amazing book”. It’s available in hard copy and ebook. Go to fizzicseducation.com.au. That’s physics spelt F-I-Z-Z-I-C-S.

[00:37:10]
Ben Newsome: As we discussed with Mandi, getting kids to learn for themselves and find out things for themselves and solve challenges for themselves is so critical, not only in school but for life in general. And in a past episode, Ali Faraj from the GWS Giants certainly was a big fan of becoming a facilitator in the classroom and giving students the time and space to explore their world and coming up with their own ideas about how the world works.

[00:37:34]
Ali Faraj: So the beauty about it is how do you get into a pedagogy where you’re letting kids explore and it’s not about the teacher stepping back, but it’s about the teacher becoming a facilitator and a coach rather than a dictator. Rather than sitting at the front of the classroom, giving them a sheet about electricity and getting them to write it down, how do you get kids to start to explore? How do you get them to start to become people of questions? “If you use a lemon, can it generate enough electricity? What is in a lemon to give you electricity?” And then for them to find a resolution for themselves and come back to you and discuss it. And the beauty about it was one person’s answer was different to the other.

[00:38:16]
Ben Newsome: Yes, you can definitely check out that episode with Ali Faraj and Gav Robertson from the GWS Giants as we talk about education and sport in the last week’s podcast. Definitely worth checking out.

[00:38:30]
Announcer: Thanks for listening to the Fizzics Ed podcast. Sign up now for our fortnightly email newsletter. It’s loaded with details on new experiments you can do, STEM teaching articles, new gadgets, exclusive offers and upcoming events. Go to fizzicseducation.com.au, scroll to the bottom and add your email.

[00:38:48]
Ben Newsome: And that just about brings us to the end of yet another Fizzics Ed podcast. Look, thanks for listening on in. There is still so much more you can do. Jump on our badly spelt website, F-I-Z-Z-I-C-S education.com.au and you will find hundreds of teaching articles and free science experiments that will certainly help you out in your school. Really, really check it out.

[00:39:10]
Ben Newsome: And hey, next week, listen in as I speak with Jan Zanetis. My very good friend Jan Zanetis from CILC, the Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration. These guys are fantastic. They have thousands of schools and hundreds of museums, zoos, aquariums, galleries in every key learning area. We’re talking science, history, maths, arts, you name it, they probably have it. This is a meet space. We’ve got all these schools and museums all in one internet spot, cilc.org, where they can meet each other and organise distance education classes. We’re talking web conferencing and video conferencing.

[00:39:48]
Ben Newsome: Jan Zanetis has heaps of experience, and CILC has been around since 1994. They really do know what they’re talking about when it comes to global education. And I really think it’d be worth your time jumping on next week’s podcast. And as always, make your science lessons be fun, may your science lessons be informative, and please make sure you’re grabbing your students’ imaginations. You’ve been listening to me, I am Ben Newsome, always will be Ben Newsome. Yeah, you’ve been listening to me Ben, and I am from Fizzics Education, and you’ve been listening to the Fizzics Ed podcast.

[00:40:21]
Announcer: You’ve been listening to another Fizzics Ed Podcast. We’re excited about science. Subscribe to us on iTunes to download the next episode as soon as it’s released. And don’t forget, for hundreds of ideas, free experiments, our new Be Amazing book and more, go to fizzicseducation.com.au. That’s physics spelled F I Z Z I C S.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What is the primary focus of Makers Empire?
While the company is often associated with 3D printing, their core focus is on providing 3D design software and educational support for schools. They aim to empower students to use design thinking to solve real-world problems, moving the technology away from being a niche “tech studies” tool and into the general primary classroom.

At what age can children start learning 3D design?
The software is designed to be accessible for children as young as five years old, though even four-year-olds have successfully engaged with it. The interface is specifically tailored for the 5-to-12 age group, handling complex CAD (Computer-Aided Design) technicalities behind the scenes so students can focus on creativity and problem-solving.

Are 3D printers safe and practical for a primary school classroom?
Yes. Modern 3D printers suitable for schools are often portable and fully enclosed to protect students from moving parts. Furthermore, schools typically use non-toxic, biodegradable plastic made from cornstarch rather than petroleum-based materials. These units are designed to be as simple to operate as a common household microwave.

Does a school need to own a 3D printer to teach 3D design?
No. Mandi emphasizes that the most significant learning occurs during the design process, where students iterate ideas and solve challenges. If a school does not have a budget for hardware, they can outsource the final printing to local libraries, community makerspaces, or commercial printing hubs.

How does 3D design fit into the Australian Curriculum?
3D design is highly versatile and can be integrated into many learning areas beyond technology. It can be used in Science to create bubble wands for light observations, in Mathematics for measuring angles and dimensions, or in Humanities through community-based projects like designing town landmarks or historical replicas.

Extra thought ideas to consider

Design Thinking as a Life Skill: Consider moving beyond viewing 3D printing as a standalone technology unit. Discuss how “problem seeking” can be fostered in students. How does the ability to create a physical solution to a community problem—such as the prosthetic limb clip mentioned in the interview—change a child’s perception of their own agency and ability to affect the world around them?

The Intersection of Empathy and STEM: The success of the Year 6 project for the child with cerebral palsy was rooted in empathy and observation. How can educators intentionally structure STEM challenges that require students to spend time empathising with a “user” before they ever touch a piece of design software?

Cross-Generational Mentorship: With the rise of makerspaces in public libraries, there is a unique opportunity for schools to connect with the wider community. Consider how a “retired engineer” and a “Year 2 student” might exchange ideas in a 3D design environment. How can schools better facilitate these intergenerational exchanges to enhance STEM outcomes?