The Jordan Innovation Lab housed at Juniper Elementary in Herriman is full of 3D printers, cutting machines, digital cameras, 3D pens and piles of cardboard and craft supplies. It is currently available to Jordan School District’s fourth, fifth and sixth graders for one of three project-based field trips: 3D printing, stop motion animation or engineering.

“The skills they take away from here — just like the problem solving and creativity — are invaluable,”  JSD digital specialist Traci Rindlisbach said. “Any kid who comes in here is going through the design principles of engineering.”

JSD digital specialists collaborate with teachers to plan curriculum-based learning activities that allow students to show what they’ve learned in a whole new way, using equipment they don’t usually have access to.

The lab has 14 3D printers, some basic and easy to use and some that can handle more advanced multicolor prints. Students love to create a design on the computer and then watch it get printed with plastic filament to become a solid object. Students often print objects related to something they are learning. One teacher had students design and 3D print something to include in a diorama of an ecosystem. Another class designed and printed models of Native American shelters they’d been learning about.

A ChompSaw, as seen on Shark Tank, safely and easily cuts cardboard for a student’s imaginative engineering project in the Jordan Innovation Lab. (Photo courtesy Tori Hadley)

Stop motion filming is a popular field trip. Students have used the technique to create animations showing what they know about fractions, the Pioneer Trail and planetary orbits. Students use the lab’s craft supplies to create objects to manipulate as they take 300-400 still shots to create a four second video.

A row of ChompSaws and a pile of cardboard greeted a class on an engineering field trip. After a quick tutorial of how to use the equipment, students designed and built solar ovens. With creativity and trial and error, they figured out how to make hinges and interlocking pieces which were quickly and safely cut using the ChompSaws.

Lab supervisor Tori Hadley said both teachers and students are excited to use the lab.

“The kids want to learn and they want to do hands-on,” Hadley said.

Through a grant from the Jordan Education Foundation, fourth, fifth and sixth grade teachers can get a free bus for field trips to the lab. For teachers of other grades, the lab holds a weekly Teacher Tinker Time to allow all teachers to explore the lab’s equipment and brainstorm ideas for using lab resources.

“It's just a way to get people here and trying things,” digital specialist Kelli Cannon said. “They'll come in because they just want to see what this is all about. They can make something and then take it back to their class, because we know if the teachers get skills, then they can share it with their classroom, even if they can't bring their kids here.”

Foothills Elementary teacher Amy Peterson attended a Tinker Time to explore the tools. She had already scheduled a field trip for her students to 3D print fish which they could use to identify the animal’s anatomy and adaptations. But then lab specialists showed her how students could make a time lapse video of the life cycle of a fish while they waited for the 3D prints to be done.

“I didn't even know that was an option,” Peterson said. “So it was nice to be able to talk to them about the standard and find out we could do something that I have no capability and no technology to be able to do. I have no idea how to make that work, but they do, so I'm pretty excited about that.”

Her field trip to the lab is scheduled for March.

One of hundreds of still shots taken by students to create a stop motion animation of the planets’ orbit of the sun. (Photo courtesy Tori Hadley)

"It's exciting to be able to have the kids try something new and find a new way to apply their learning outside of the classroom, but also using some technology that I think is going to really get them excited about it,” she said.

 When there isn’t a field trip scheduled, Juniper Elementary students have access to the one-of-a-kind lab which was made possible by community partners Utah Jazz, Utah Mammoth and America First Credit Union

“It's actually really fun because you get to learn how to use things that you've never tried before,” a student said.

Two students recently had an idea to create a maze for remote controlled Spheros and used the space and equipment in the lab to build it. The school also has a 3D printing club, in which students work together on projects such as creating centerpieces for a Jordan District banquet.

Employees cultivate a nonperfectionist atmosphere in the lab where mistakes are expected. They are quick to show students the drawer full of their failed prints.

“We fail all the time,” Rindlisbach said. “But we're still here and it's because we failed and we kept going and we learned from our failures. So we just show them that we mess up all the time. That is something I think kids don't necessarily always have—the opportunity to mess up and try again.”

Cannon said students get excited about the potential of 3D-printing movie props, tablet cases or things they can sell, but others think bigger, like designing light-weight 3D-printed objects for a space station or printing prosthetic limbs. Lab employees talk with students about careers that use the skills they learn in the lab and encourage them--especially the girls, who are underrepresented in STEM fields-- to take advantage of the many CTE and STEM courses offered in middle and high school.