Read Powerful Learning, Real Applications: Part 1 for background about City of Medcine Academy teacher Vance Kite’s “Disease and Society” class, which is creating prosthetic hands using 3-D printing.

As a teacher, telling your students that they’re going to create prosthetic hands for children in three states has to make you feel pretty cool. But it’s not enough for a project to sound fun — your students have to actually learn something in the process.

What makes this E-nabling the Future project a success — regardless of the physical outcome — is that Vance Kite’s students are learning about public health, scientific documentation, cutting-edge technology and so much more.

Student Voices

Read more in the students’ own blogs about what they’ve been learning — just click the names linked below:

• “…when making something, a lot of math is involved. For the real world, I learned that communication is a very important thing when doing business with someone else. It is important for the person who you are working for to know everything that is going on…” - Toni Brooks
• “Before this class I had no idea that you could even make a completely usable prosthetic hand from a 3-D printer or even how to work a 3-D printer. I also learned how to professionally communicate with others. With this project you have to make the hand that the kid you were matched up with wants. You have to put what you think looks better behind what he wants.” - Coralia Fangmeir
• “…this is a project that for the very first time I am very interested and eager to do it and I feel like I have to get this done. There is no giving up on this project because at the end of the day someone is waiting on a hand that they have been promised to get… It’s not [just] some project that will be displayed in a room or just graded and taken home.” - Elaina Ramirez
• “The process of building a prosthetic hand on the 3-D printer is very precise because one small slip up can ruin your whole printing… The part that I am enjoying the most with this project is the Maker Bot portion because you get to see a layout of the hands before you actually start printing and you’re able to adjust the hand parts in the way that best fits the printing style.” - Jamia Robertson