@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.

@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 ...

@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.

@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.

@michaliszissiou said:

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.

@michaliszissiou said:

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.

And ... no need to say that they perfectly know that there are at least 500 years between Homer and Plato and that a castle inside a castle doesnt make sense but they also wanted to have fun and show what they've done.

Even the man that lifts the other warrior doesnt make sense in physics but ... it's fun. And you have to let them have fun if you want them to work and learn.

guzman.

Gaieus, ecofeco, chris, ... thank you.

About Plato. Some explanations.
The project was born as a math project and I am a math teacher.
I let the students use sketchup one hour a week and they gradually reach a level where they can draw all platonic solids and even more complex solids such as the truncated icosahedrons, etc.
As a math tool Sketchup is really great. I could talk a lot about its use for modelling, visualizing, teaching, familiarize with 3d geometry. These are some notes I wrote last year.

When the project was reaching its end the director of the school, after seeing some of our videos, had the idea to ask us to produce a video about the Iliad to use in a concert at the end of this school year.

We didnt had much time so the students produced: temples, warriors, ships, shields, etc, but we also reused many of the models that they had already done. This explains all platonic solids and the castle inside the castle.
They could've done much better if they could've worked for the Iliad video the whole year.

Anyway: Plato lived in 400b.c, while Homer (as a person or group) lived around 800-1000 b.c. That's a lot of years in between, you are right, but, one could say, ... greek society didnt change much. And, I would say,
"a society of reason, geometry, light" is a perfect society for war: it is precisely rationality that leads to war. (But that's just my opinion).

Anyway: they really worked a lot with math and that's my goal and my work.
We could've worked better with history, we'll do that the next time. In the meantime they had a lot to think about.

About the animation.
Chris you're right. The delays were done on purpose. It's my fault.
I'm not that good at making videos and I didnt have much time.
Thanks. I'll remember it is not a good effect.

Finally.
What I can say is that they really learnt a lot about math and about modelling and that they love their video.

guzman

Insegno matematica alle medie e faccio usare sketchuup un'ora a settimana.

Tutti i modelli nel video sono stati creati dai miei studenti (di 13 anni).
Il montaggio del video e le simulazioni con sketchyphysics le ho fatte io

Troy War with Sketchup in Junior High School [Final Version]
[flash=640,385:3ofjn5a6]http://www.youtube.com/v/ZcYCuhTgwqY&hl=en_US&fs=1[/flash:3ofjn5a6]

spero che vi piaccia,
commenti e domande sono i benvenuti,

guzman.

All models (except for the islands) were drawn by my students (13-year olds).
The video editing and the sketchyphysics simulations were made by me.

Troy War with Sketchup in Junior High School [Final Version]
[flash=640,385:1gs8a85s]http://www.youtube.com/v/ZcYCuhTgwqY&hl=en_US&fs=1[/flash:1gs8a85s]

hope you like it,
comments and questions are really wellcome,

guzman.

Here goes another one:

Model by Enrico
(music Nine Inch Nails)
[flash=640,385:1y83mr7y]http://www.youtube.com/v/OSPSQSM81Og&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0[/flash:1y83mr7y]

hope you find it interesting,

I think you can see that Lorenzo (the first one) is more technological,
Dario (the second one) is more life enthusiastic,
and this one is more childish and war-centric.

guzman.

@gaieus said:

I do not mean they should (only) be in English ...

Thanks you're right, I wasn't thinking about the way the 3D warehouse works ...
So, yes, the descriptions should be in various languages.

guzman.

Hi Tom,
thanks for your comment.

@tfdesign said:

I'm going to be doing some very similar stuff ... So I'll also post back here when the work is done, and link up the results.

That would be really interesting.

@tfdesign said:

... that simple star shaped 3D Asterisk really intrigued me too

The "Asterisk", as you call it, is sort of an exploded icosahedron
and it is simpler than it might look.
That is, you first draw an icosahedron:
you can find a simple explanation here,
you then pull each face ...

if you now connect the pulled faced you get a dodecahedron ...

if you instead truncate the vertices of the dodecahedron you get a soccer ball (truncated icosahedron) ...

guzman.

Hi Gaieus,

many thanks for your comment and suggestions,

• for what concerns collections, the models are actually organized in collections and you can check what they've done each week here.
• the collection (or at least the main one) are lacking a whole description and links: you are right, I should put some work into that
• about translations: yes, the description of the main collection (at least) should be in english, the problem is: some many things to do to follow each of my classes at school. I will put some effort into adding some more detailed descriptions for collections ...
• I also have a very active Blog where I post about school, sketchup, math ... and the kids leave lots of comments ... but, again, it is in italian
• Last year I wrote some notes about Sketchup and teaching math.

thanks,
guzman.

Here goes the composition of the models of another student: Dario.

Cars, icosahedrons, truncated icosahedrons, tetrahedrons, stellae octangulae, sierpinski tetrahedron, ...

Models by Dario 3D
[flash=640,385:2euu10ng]http://www.youtube.com/v/Gd6H3AAFBs0&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0[/flash:2euu10ng]

models of my students here

guzman.

Hi,

remember me?

I'm am math teacher in Florence, Italy.
I teach in junior high school (11-14 years old kids) and I make my students use Sketchup as a work on solids.
Last year I posted some videos with my students' works

This year, my students worked hard,
one hour a week for 14 weeks so far,
and they produced really great stuff (and lots of models, 464 models so far).

You can see the models of my students here

I cannot make a single video with all this stuff so I'm making videos
with the models of each student or little groups.

Here goes the first one which I think is interesting.
Comments are really appreciated.

Models by Lorenzo 3D
[flash=640,385:1dq8srhk]http://www.youtube.com/v/kOjWUnEm9lE&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0[/flash:1dq8srhk]

models of my students here

by coincidence the name of the class is 3D

guzman.

I coudln't resist and I made the students' cars work inside Google Earth.
I did not write the code (it was written by someone at Google),
I only changed it to make it work with the students cars.

Accept to install the plugin if required, it's great fun ...

Drive your car in Google Earth

hope you like it.

@broomstick said:

Per curiosità, dove insegni? In che zona di Italia.

Una cosa che mi ha incuriosito sono le riprese con la camera che segue le macchine... è una caratteristica di sketcht physics? Non l'ho mai utilizzato, per cui non so..

Ciao,
grazie.
Scusa il ritardo nella risposta. Sono stato un po' impegnato ...
Insegno a Firenze.

Si, sketchyphysics ha la funzionalità "segui oggetto", è davvero fantastico.

I ragazzi sono letteralmente impazziti.

Ho anche delle novità interessanti:

Guida la tua macchina in Goolge Earth

(Non l'ho programmato io, l'ho solo modificato per farlo funzionare con le macchine dei ragazzi)

Ciao,
grazie ancora per i vostri commenti,

Grazie anche a dizain

Thanks,
the Control Panel was actually off screen,
by messing around with the coordinates in the ruby
I eventually was able to see the control panel again ...

thanks.

Not strictly related to the video above but, I used sketchyphysics
to add a motor and a working steering system to the blue convertible:

[flash=510,412:70u7boel]http://www.youtube.com/v/aDznlx7bufs&hl=en&fs=1[/flash:70u7boel]

Model available here.

@anssi said:

:roflmao: Sketchyphysics + Chianti

It took me a litle while to understand it ...