Tech in the Classroom
Photograph by Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg
Bre Pettis was the first kid on his block to have an Apple II computer. The device was intriguing, and all the neighborhood kids tinkered with it endlessly even though it served little practical purpose. Pettis went on to start MakerBot, the 3D printing company, and he sees its products in the same light: maybe they seem silly at first, but the kids will figure them out.
To get kids playing with 3D printers, Pettis is emulating Apple in another way. On Tuesday, the company announced an ambitious plan to get Makerbot starter kits into classrooms. Apple has always been good at getting into schools; it sold 1.1 million iPads to educational institutions in the quarter that ended in June. These contracts represent a lucrative business opportunity for tech companies, and explain why everyone from News Corp to Amazon is scrambling to get their tablets in front of children.
Selling a 3D printer to every school would be boon to Makerbot, of course, but the company hasn't lined up any public contracts. Instead, the company's education initiative is based on crowdfunding. The kits it sells, which include the company's Republicator 2 printer, some of the raw material needed to make objects, and a service plan from the company, cost about $2,550. Teachers who want one go onto DonorsChoose, a crowdfunding site for schools, and describe what they would do with the printer. They are allowed to raise everything but $98 on the site. The rest they have to come up with offline, either by paying for it themselves, or getting the PTA or parents to chip in. This kind of not-quite fully funded grant lessens the chances of the printers going to waste, says Pettis.
MakerBot and DonorsChoose describe this as a plan to get a 3D printer in every school in the country, but the chances are slim it can reach that scale without help. DonorsChoose projects raised $48 million last year. Even if donors gave all their money to 3D printing projects, that much money would buy about 19,000 printers; there are about 100,000 public schools nationwide. Further, the average project size was $600, or about one-quarter of what a 3D printing kit costs.
Pettis hopes that corporate donors will fund individual schools. He announced one company that has already signed on: AutoDesk, which makes 3D design software, is funding 500 projects. Pettis also said that he will be 'taking care of Brooklyn' by funding projects in his home borough. While he declined to discuss the dollar amount, DonorsChoose said Pettis's donation was one of the larger individual commitments it has ever received.
This is clearly a labor of love for Pettis, who once taught public school in Seattle. He says that he has always wanted 3D printing to become part of school, especially at a time when the idea of shop class is fading and students rarely make anything with their hands anymore. He is recently flush, after MakerBot was acquired by Stratasys, the closest thing 3D printing has to an old guard, for $403 million in June. And while a nation of students learning how to operate 3D printers is clearly in the company's interests, Pettis really didn't want to talk about how the program would increase revenue or even how it would hasten the mainstreaming of 3D printing.
'That's not the focus,' he said.
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