Stay updated with the latest TCEA announcements. Find news, event updates, and important information for educators and tech enthusiasts.
Last week, TCEA announced our first 3D Design Contest winners. During the contest, the students worked together in teams of four with the help of an adult sponsor. They were tasked with coming up with a solution to a real-world problem by designing a product with 3D design software. Each team kept careful track of their thinking as they followed the steps of the Engineering Design Process from researching and brainstorming solutions to testing a prototype and refining their design.
We were amazed by the creativity of this year’s entries and want to share with our readers a little taste of what students can accomplish when they’re given the freedom to engineer and create. Here are the top five 3D Design Contest winners and a little about their projects.
First Place: Vivamus
Photo Credit: Image courtesy of Vivamus
The winning team was from Archer City ISD, and Mika Morgan was their team sponsor. This group wanted to solve a problem that affects millions of people around the world. Through their research they discovered that in many parts of the world, people who struggle with vision impairment don’t have access to corrective lenses. Untreated vision problems can lead to more severe issues and even blindness.
Their solution was to design inexpensive glasses frames that can be 3D printed on site. They called their product Vivamus from the Latin for “let us live.” The students designed the frames and carefully calculated the cost to print each one. In the end, the product they created wasn’t just a lesson in using 3D software, but in collaboration, problem-solving, and engineering thinking.
Second Place: EZ – Stand
Photo Credit: Image courtesy of EZ – Stand
The second place team from Burkburnett ISD was overseen by sponsor Glenda Moore. These students sought to help people who suffer from mobility issues and have difficulty getting in and out of chairs. The inspiration for the project was one of the team member’s grandmothers. They designed a chair, fittingly called the EZ – Stand, that could swivel up and down from the back legs to help a person to stand up out of it. In making their project, the students considered all of the needs of their potential user, including comfort and appearance, as well as basic utility.
Third Place: N.W.A. Nail without Agony
Photo Credit: Image courtesy of NWA
What problem is more universal than worrying about banging your thumb when trying to hammer a nail into a piece of wood? The third place team was from Brady ISD and led by Teresa Smith. They wanted to create a tool that would protect the fingers of craftsmen, carpenters, and DIYers everywhere. They had a number of ideas. Some of them didn’t pan out as they’d hoped. But they kept going back to the drawing board and refining their vision. Finally, they created a plier-like tool they called the N.W.A. (Nail Without Agony). They then created a plan to market their product in hardware and general stores.
Fourth Place: ArtCase
Photo Credit: Image courtesy of ArtCase
The team from Beaumont ISD, led by sponsor Joy Schwartz, wanted to bring more beauty to people’s everyday lives. They thought about something many people see and use regularly: their phone and its protective case. They wanted to find a way to make phone cases more beautiful and also more customizable to each individual’s artistic preferences. Enter: the ArtCase. This is a 3D-printed phone case with a main body and eight customizable panes. These panes are a chance for an individual to add their own unique artistic expression into their phone case.
Fifth Place: Changing Jordan’s Life in a Click!
The device in progress.
When students from London ISD, in a team led by Holli Horton, started thinking about a problem they wanted to solve, they chose to focus on helping a member of their own community. Jordan is a student who uses a wheelchair and has mobility issues that limit his hand movements. The problem he faced is that he was unable to buckle his seat belt without assistance. The students decided to design a tool that would help Jordan to do this specific task. In turn, this would provide him greater freedom and self-reliance. Their solution could also have a larger impact for people who have mobility issues similar to Jordan’s. But in the meantime, the team made a task easier for at least one person in their community.
Congratulations on a Job Well Done!
All of these incredible winners received trophies for their school, along with individual medals. However, these are only a few of the amazing creations submitted. TCEA congratulates all of the entrants of the 3D Design Contest for their hard work and incredible results. They are to be commended for their insight in identifying a problem and the strong critical thinking, collaboration, and creativity they displayed in solving it.
For more information about the 3D Design Contest, please see this website. In its inaugural year, the competition was open to high school students, but we plan to open the field to more grades in subsequent years. We hope you will enter a team, and we look forward to seeing your team on this list next year!
In the midst of all that you do, please take time and enjoy the 
remember all of the things that I routinely forget. She’s the one who gets text messages and phone calls from her boss at all hours of the day (and yes, I’m sorry to admit it, the night, too). She runs our robotics contests and our awards and scholarships programs, both of which have huge numbers of participants. She is also our membership software expert, which means that when the rest of us can’t make sense of the programs we use, she helps us, always very patiently. I often wonder what she must tell her husband about us each day when she goes home; I’m sure the stories about our incompetence make him laugh. But she never makes us feel stupid, even when we ask her the same question 100 times. She is always patient, and TCEA wouldn’t be what it has grown to be without her.
Janny works the reception desk of our building, which means that she is the first face visitors see. She is also the first person on the phone and chat lines, making her the voice of TCEA, too. And that is a blessing as she is the sweetest woman I have ever met. I have never seen anyone multi-task like she does. She can be entering purchase orders, responding to a member’s frantic phone call about a forgotten password, restocking drinks for a workshop or room rental happening in our conference center, and fixing the copy machine, all while smiling. She always has a pleasant greeting and a piece of candy for the UPS, FedEx, cleaners, lawn maintenance, and post office folks who drop by, and has never once been seen with a frown on her face. Some day, when I have enough karma points, I want to be Janny.
Carrie, our director of member services; she answers to each of our 17,556 members. And that’s a lot of bosses to have! Erin is one of the newer members of the team, but has fit in with the rest of us crazies since day one. She spends a lot of time working in our membership database system, which can cause her to go a little bug-eyed at times. And she is our official “booth babe,” traveling across Texas to talk with members and non-members alike at area events and to preservice teachers at their student teacher orientations. Unlike the rest of the staff who are more specialized, Erin is expected to know everything about TCEA: all of our programs, our offerings, and our benefits. From member webinars to our advocacy program to the daily app list to what each SIG provides, she knows it and happily shares it with everyone she comes in contact with. She is the best advocate a member could have.
Our newest administrative professional, Ashley, supports the professional development team (Bruce, Diana, Peggy, and Miguel) and our advocate Jennifer. She is in charge of the TCEA certification programs, making sure all of the PD events are on the calendar and available for registration, mailing out completed and framed certificates, setting up for face-to-face workshops, and assisting the trainers to keep track of where they are supposed to be doing presentations when. She helps with the set up of all of our PD events, like the Tots conferences and System Admin, as well as the various academies. And she runs the convention volunteer program. She sometimes looks a little shell shocked as she has the most TCEA staffers to keep an eye on, but she manages all of them beautifully.
