The Nevada system of public libraries is considering NCLab as a tool to teach kids and adults essential 21st century job skills including computer programming, 3D modeling and other STEM subjects. In the two-day workshop we covered Karel programming that teaches computational thinking and typing and debugging code, Turtle programming that teaches full Python syntax while keeping the coding visual and fun, and the full 3D modeling course where students learn how to use powerful 3D modeling concepts to build their own designs and print them on a 3D printer. Thanks to Sena Loyd from Carson City Library we had a 3D printer on site (thank you Sena!). A few illustrative photos are below. We are looking forward to training South Nevada librarians in Las Vegas in two weeks from now!
The group included library directors and staff from several Nevada counties:
Here is a sample 3D design that we created using Turtle Tina:
Watching a 3D printer at work
Here is a video. It’s not complete, the printing took almost one hour:
And here is the result, after breaking off the layer of the support material (photo courtesy of Sena and Aubrey):
We also made a spinning top. This one was made by Enrique Valdivia (click to view in a 3D viewer):
And here is the corresponding part created on a CNC machine:
Spinning top tournament:
The librarians also created a number of great Karel games! Here is Bakery Duty by K. Antonucci (medium difficulty, requires several repeat loops):
And here is Flower Garden by J. Dyk (challenging, requires a pair of nested repeat loops):
Click on the images above to play the games!