Troy War with Sketchup in Junior High School [Final Version]

guzman tierno

Greeks changed a lot. In a way that made all us here individuals (democracy).

You dont need rationality to be an individual.
Otherwise kids, which are very irrational, would not be individuals.

But I dont want to discuss this aspect, even though it is a very important aspect.

and these boring platonic solids.

They are indeed, but not with sketchup and if you use them to draw perfect soccer balls. Kids love to understand the regularities of life ...

@michaliszissiou said:

A more artistic approach of history makes young people more happy, do you know this?

More artistic than that ... What are you looking for ?

Anyway:

I think I've answer your questions,
I think there's no need to puke on a nice project,
I think, above all, that this project works for math and geometry.
The kids get to love the subject, they learn a lot and they accept to study issues that normally are considered very difficult.

guzman tierno

@d12dozr said:

guzman, I wish you were my teacher when I was 13! Good job

Thank you,

I started teaching three years ago.
I try my best to let the curiosity and the joy of exploring that kids have, emerge in what we do in the classroom.
It is interesting that many adults tell me that that is what they would've wanted.
I hope this helps the young individuals to grow up with passion
and, even if I make mistake, I cannot help but try again
'cause I'm convinced that getting the kids involved is the only way to teach them something.

guzman.

pilou

Epic!

pyroluna

guzman I really like the project!

I still use highschool math every day when modelling in SketchUp. We had this 2d program when I was a kid, that was used for drawing mathematically, proving that certain corners were the same or 180-alpha... stuff like that. It would have been so much more fun with SketchUp!!

mrmar975

From one teacher to another, great use of Sketch-Up. It is through these techniques of reapplying the learned knowledge across multiple platforms that helps retention. I am a high school teacher and have seen the 3D world draw every kind of student into its uses.

olishea

4:37.......wow thats a brutal death! good job haha

Cyberdactyl

You should be proud Guzman, that is quite a compilation you have there tying so many aspects into a single video.

And take michalis's criticism with a grain of salt. Greeks are not in the best of moods lately. The credit card has been taken away.

michaliszissiou

@cyberdactyl said:

You should be proud Guzman, that is quite a compilation you have there tying so many aspects into a single video.

And take michalis's criticism with a grain of salt. Greeks are not in the best of moods lately. The credit card has been taken away.

You may be right, these are my nightmares, but don't misunderstand me, what's coming is huge and not just a greek problem. IMO we have to be more careful, especially teachers.

guzman tierno

@Pilou:
thanks

@Pyroluna:
I think you talk about Cabri or GeoGebra.
I make the students use them too. But for 3D geometry Sketchup is great.

@mrmar975:
Thank you,
I agree with you, applying what we study in various fields facilitates understanding the meaning of what we study.
And Sketchup is great: you mix technology, information technology, math, history, and whatever you want to.

guzman tierno

@olishea said:

4:37.......wow thats a brutal death! good job haha

the kids wanted it like that,
they also would've wanted even worse scenes ...
they just have fun with that stuff.
I think that having fun plays a great role in learning.
When you have fun you are likely to study and remember even complex stuff.
Some of the kids studied installed and studied sketchyphysics 'cause they wanted to produce more scenes and wanted to move some carts and stuff like that.
If you instead ask to study sketchyphysics explaining that it is an interesting physics simulator that may be used to study some physics, you dont get the same results ...

guzman tierno

@cyberdactyl said:

You should be proud Guzman, that is quite a compilation you have there tying so many aspects into a single video.|

Thank you.

Here are some more details about this project.

The students got to work with SketchUp for one hour per week, over 18 weeks. Each week had its own theme:

Week 1: parallelpipeds and chairs (Rectangle and Push/Pull tools)
Week 2: simple houses to build a simple greek city (Line tool)
Week 3: tetrahedrons, octahedrons and variations
Week 4: tables with books, lamps, etc (groups)
Week 5: cube of cubes, pyramid of pyramids, etc. (moving and copying groups)
Week 6: wooden 3d puzzle (Divide tool)
Week 7-8: cars and roofs (multiple selection)
Week 9: icosahedron, dodecahedron, truncated icosahedron (rotating groups)
Week 10: pipes and vases (Follow Me tool)
Week 11: more round objects
Week 12: Temples
Week 13: DNA (Rotate tool)
Week 14: men, shields, swords
Week 15: rooms
Week 16: men, shields, swords - completed
Week 17: helmets (hidden geometry)
Week 18: Random stuff for the video: troy, war carts, etc.

For each week, students were given a worksheet explaining what they were about to model and how to go about it. For an example, check out the worksheet for the helmet (in Italian).

In all the students produced over 500 models during class, and completed another 100 on their own, at home. Here is their collection of models in the 3D Warehouse. Speaking of the 3D Warehouse, I didn't let his students download any warehouse models for this project; everything is from scratch!

You can see many more student videos of SketchUp projects (with 13-year old students) in my YouTube channel.

thanks,
guzman.

flipya

I can sympathize with Michalis on the whole Plato-Homer thing, and feel there's no real need to bring Greece's current financial position into the discussion.

That aside, I love your project man! It's great how you mix 'boring old' math with computers and 3d animation. I bet there's not a single student who didn't love doing this, and I'm sure by doing this you've taught your students a much better feeling for triple-axis systems. I was always pretty good at math, but some of my classmates weren't. They would've had great benefit from a project like this.

guzman tierno

@flipya said:

... I love your project man! It's great how you mix 'boring old' math with computers and 3d animation. I bet there's not a single student who didn't love doing this, and I'm sure by doing this you've taught your students a much better feeling for triple-axis systems. I was always pretty good at math, but some of my classmates weren't. They would've had great benefit from a project like this.

Thanks Philip,
you found better words than I was able to find to describe the meaning of this project.

I plan to describe better the whole project and to make the worksheets freely available but it's gonna take me some time and I need to translate them.

guzman.