The Design & Technology department at Stratford Girls’ Grammar School has recently been upgraded thanks to a generous donation of two Dremel 3D printers. These are excellent resources for our school and will provide students with even more modern learning and extra-curricular opportunities.

In today’s blog, Mr Price, Head of Design & Technology, shares his excitement over these new arrivals and explains how they will impact the learning environment moving forwards.

Over to Mr Price …

 

I have been fortunate enough to lead Design & Technology at SGGS for nearly three years now and I am still thoroughly enjoying building a sustainable, successful and exciting faculty; complete with new and exciting equipment that facilitates 21^st-century learning. I have always been passionate about developing the profile of DT within the school community, as well as working hard to provide opportunities that enlighten our students to creative, technical and practical skills.

Although we have experienced unprecedented adaptations to our curriculum over the last 12 months, one thing has always remained consistent: our students continue to work tirelessly and strive to develop their knowledge and understanding, whilst also taking opportunities to flex their creative and practical muscles at every opportunity!

To ensure we are consistently able to offer our students the highest-quality learning experiences, both academically and in terms of extra-curricular offerings, we regularly engage with the wider school community, other local schools, universities and local businesses, drawing on their support to further develop our own facilities.  We also have exceptionally supportive parents, staff and students; my store cupboard is often a treasure-trove of donations, filled with a whole host of inspiring things from retro tech to really useful materials!

 

 

Positive impacts

Recently, I was contacted by Jean-Pierre Lihou, parent of Clara in Ursa Y12, and Business Development Manager at Dremel DigiLabs at Bosch. He was keen to help support the development, enhancement and modernising of our Technology Department and after several email exchanges, we were able to complete the donation of two state-of-the-art Dremel DigiLabs 3D Printers. This adds to our existing CAM facilities and will enhance the practical equipment available to all of our students, allowing them to not just theorise about cutting edge technology, but actually use it up-close and first-hand! 

We are now incredibly lucky to be in a position where we can utilise a broad range of 3D printing opportunities (with three fully functional 3D printers accessible) as well as laser cutting and engraving on a large scale, sublimation printing and transfer as well as maintaining our existing CNC CAM facilities. This is all underpinned by the rock-solid ICT, software and networking facilities we already have at our disposal at SGGS. 

I’d like to say a big thank you from all of us at SGGS to the team at the Dremel DigiLabs.  Hopefully once we are back in school we can link up more closely for training and experiences to support our students and staff even further. As we strive to maintain our momentum in developing DT as a sustainable learning experience, our students will continue to see the value of implementing technology as part of their academic journey.