Report: Chinese Government Plans To Put 3D Printers In All Elementary Schools

InfiniteZero writes The Chinese government has a new plan to install a 3D printer in each of its approximately 400,000 elementary schools over the next two years. Education is probably one of the areas that will benefit the most from 3D printers in the long run. The problem though is getting the machines into the schools in the first place. With prices generally ranging from $400 to $3,000 for typical desktop 3D printers, they are not cheap, and with budgets within many school districts running dry, both in the United States and overseas, the unfortunate fact is that many schools simply can’t afford them, not to mention the materials and time it takes to train teachers to use them.

Comments

Unconfirmed rumours

[Anonymous Coward]

These are unsubstantiated claims, and basically there is a 0% chance this is true. This should set your BS alarms ringing pretty loud.

School technology

[XNormal]

1886 Mimeograph

1923 Spirit duplicator

2015 3D printer

Technology in Education

[Dutch Gun]

Good to see it's not just the US that wastes money on expensive technology-related boondoggles that don't appreciably translate to improved education.

With China’s recent plan for education, the ball is now clearly in Obama’s court. With a little under two years left in his final term, will he follow suit and fund a similar program to the one China has planned? We can only hope!

Uh, no. Why does this have anything to do with Obama anyhow? Don't just buy millions of dollars worth of hardware and dump it in the hands of teachers. At least first create a small pilot program to see if this is a worthwhile idea before spending millions of dollars on a device that remains unused. Nothing good comes from wholesale adoption of technology without first checking to see if it will actually be of any use to students and teachers. See: California iPad program scandal / disaster.

Re:Technology in Education

[AmiMoJo]

Back when I was at school we had Lego and programmable Logo line drawing robots. We had a variety of other construction toys and printers... I seem to recall we had a plotter. In fact even when I was at pre-school we had a toy called a Big Track (or something like that) that you could program with simple commands like "forward 2m, turn left, forward 1m". I must have been 3 or 4 when I was doing that, and I'd say it was the start of my interest in programming and engineering.

Eh

[sociocapitalist]

It's never to early to learn how to make counterfeit product

not enough money

[phantomfive]

A lot of school districts in California either bought iPads or Chrome Books for every student. It's not a matter of money, it's a matter of weird priorities (and weird bureaucracy).

Now the school districts that got Chromebooks are upset because they got the cheap devices, and the ones that got iPads are upset because they keep breaking. It's like a disfunctional family.

Re:not enough money

[Dutchmaan]

Leftists always get together to gain strength and impose their stupidity on others.

Wow... the right claiming to be the party of intelligence.... just wow....

Budget running dry?

[duckintheface]

We use terms like "budget running dry" or "the school districts simply can't afford them" to mask the fact that we have prioritized tax cuts over education. The US is a rich country but the money is concentrated in fewer and fewer hands by the process of rolling back progressive taxes (income and property). This is a conscious choice to ignore educational needs in the coming generations.

The availability of adequate budgets is a separate issue from the advisability of spending money on 3D printers. Spend the money on basic education first and if you still want to experiment with high tech, then fine.

Re:Budget running dry?

[ArcadeMan]

And if you know a place that's "rolling back property taxes" I would love to fucking see it.

Walmart?

School budgets

[Solandri]

With prices generally ranging from $400 to $3,000 for typical desktop 3D printers, they are not cheap, and with budgets within many school districts running dry, both in the United States and overseas, the unfortunate fact is that many schools simply canâ(TM)t afford them

That's a myth. The U.S. spends more than a quarter of a million dollars per K-12 classroom every year (average 20-23.4 students per class). We could easily afford one 3D printer per school. Heck, we could afford one per classroom.

The problem is schools are top-heavy and administrators suck up most of that money, then create an artificial financial crisis every time a budget cut is threatened. This gets teachers and the teachers' union to claim we aren't spending enough on education, when we're already spending way more than we should be.

Yes I'm aware that first link I gave says administration is only $843 per student per year. That's because the administrators have gamed the stats to hide how much money they're sucking up. If you drill down into the numbers (p.56), you find that "In 2008-09, salary and employee benefits for school staff amounted to $8,797 per student." Subtract $843 for administration and that leaves $7954 per student supposedly going to instructional teachers.

For 2010, the average student to teacher ratio was 16.0 (this includes substitutes and assistants). Ask yourself, is the average teacher making ($7954 * 16) = $127,264 per year in salary and benefits? Of course not. The figure is inflated because the administrators have misclassified most of their salary and benefits as "instructional" instead of "administration" to hide how much money their draining from our educational system.

Re:School budgets

[Jason Levine]

Politics also comes into play way more than it should. In an elementary school in our district, a principal was fired (he sexually harassed multiple teachers). Instead of just being fired, though, he was transferred to a position where he could keep his pay while doing nothing for a few years. The district didn't want the bad publicity of a lawsuit, so they hushed everything up as much as they could and kept him on the payroll.

Another example: New York awarded a $26 million contract over 8 years to Pearson to administer high stakes tests. There are no signs that the tests actually return any data and the passing mark has been artificially set so that less than 40% of students pass. (I believe now you need to get a B to pass. C or D are considered failing grades.) There is no oversight to make sure the tests are age appropriate or even that they are graded right. It's just give the test (no peaking for teachers or they get in trouble), ship them back where they are graded and then destroyed. Want to contest a grade? Sorry, it's been destroyed already. There has been a big outcry against this sort of thing, but the politicians keep pushing it because a) they like "data" (even if the data isn't accurate or helpful in any way), b) they get lobbying money from Pearson and other companies who profit off this kind of thing. Sometimes, state/local officials even have direct financial ties to these organizations.

Meanwhile, they keep claiming that it's the teachers' fault and the teachers get paid too much. My wife is a teacher - though not in the classroom now - she got paid less than minimum wage when you considered how many hours she worked.

Re:$400 an obstacle?

[Joe_Dragon]

But if it's like HP the ink costs more then the printer.

a bit young

[slashmydots]

I'm an absolute expert at photoshop and I know HTML design inside and outside. I'm a pro 3D landscape designer for my work and last time I tried a 3D modeling program, I couldn't make heads or tails of it. After hours I gave up, having barely made a peanut shape. If I can't do it, I don't think elementary children and their teachers can. They could simply download premade 3d models but that's not usually the point of doing it in schools.

Re:maybe they should put the money into cleaner ai

[morgauxo]

Talk about vision! They are teaching their children to make things with 3d printers. AND they are converting their air into something that can be fed into the extruders instead of filament. Just plug it in and start printing.

It's going to be like everyone having a Star Trek replicator!