Recap: IPON 2016 Education Exhibition

In the first week of February Ultimaker attended IPON, the exhibition for Educational Innovation and ICT in the Netherlands. This two-day exhibition is one of the most important in the Dutch educational sector, attracting almost 6,000 innovators from around the country.

Our partner at IPON was the Dutch 3Dkanjers program, which focuses on the primary and secondary school segments. 3Dkanjers leads projects that empower children to learn 21st century skills and develop their STEM-related talents through the use of 3D printing. You may have seen 3DKanjers' work before in our story about primary school Het Slingertouw, where 3DKanjers led the project to have the kids learn to build and subsequently use Ultimaker Original printers.

At IPON they were showing off their new lesson curriculum booklets and exhibiting the complimentary 3D prints. Some of these 3D prints were quite special, such as the vase which had been reworked with concrete paint or the piggy bank that was painted used the hydrographic bath method.

We also explained to visitors how easy it is to combine 3D printing with electronics and programming. A great example is the Rain Gauge, a simple project that teaches children 3D printing skills combined with simple Makey Makey electronics and coding in the Scratch language from the MIT Media Lab.

Another participant at the Ultimaker booth was Doodle3D, who were showing off their new app. Do you think 3D designing is too difficult for your young ones? Doodle3D proves that it's not! Their original Doodle3D WiFi box was already quite capable of showing us how kids can use simple 2D sketching tools to design 3D models, but their new app takes 3D design tools aimed at children to a whole new level. They demonstrated how children could use this app to design a firetruck with functional wheels that printed in place, requiring no assembly after printing.

We can look back on an inspiring exhibition, where we were able to speak to many teachers and other education experts to learn more about their hopes and dreams for 3D printing in the classroom. In fact it's an experience we'd love to repeat in other countries, to learn from the opinions and experiences from teachers all over the world!

Are you visiting a big education event in your country? Would you like to meet us at this event? Then please get in touch with us at education@ultimaker.com. And maybe we can bring 3D inspiration to your classroom as well!