turtle art tiles project

Do you want to make this? Looks interesting!

Pics from Turtle Art Tiles Project Guide

I’ve been in possession and an admirer of Josh Burker’s Invent to Learn Guide to Fun book for a while now. My interest was further piqued when Sylvia Martinez and Gary Stager made an online offer of a version of his “Turtle Art Tiles” Project. Then, recently, I was given the opportunity to teach a Year 8 “Inventiveness” class at my school. So, I thought this would be an ideal project for this class.

This project involves some significant transformations from bits to atoms: from Turtle Art, to Tinkercad to 3D prints and then to a painted clay product. I’ve previously had some experience in the first three but working with clay is something new for me.

First up, you make a design in Turtle Art. I didn’t copy either guide here but decided to make a well known tessellation that I had done before:

Through Turtle Art you can then save as an SVG and from there import it into Tinkercad. Once there I used the ruler to resize the shape to 90x90x7.5 mm. Then export the file from Tinkercad as an STL and import it into PrusaSlicer.

Next 3D print the shape and use the print to imprint the clay and, finally, paint the clay:

OK that’s one down and I can probably do better next time, especially with the clay and paint section.

I will now write in more detail about bringing this activity into my Year 8 "Inventiveness" class, which is due to start in a couple of weeks.

I can anticipate issues that will arise. It’s a large (22) mixed ability class. Some of the students will be enthused and eat it up, others will struggle with the complexity of it … coding, variables, file management, the transformations, messy clay and other technical / personal / attitudinal issues I can’t even imagine yet.

Economics: Currently my school is cash strapped. There is no shortage of computers or internet but for the clay steps to happen probably I will have to buy the materials myself. Partly because of that I’m thinking about alternative pathways. But I have other reasons too.

Bottlenecks: I’ll be taking my own Prusa 3D printers to school for students to use. I own 4, two MINI+’s and two MK3S+’s. But four is not enough given that 3D printers are slow. So, at this stage of the process I’ll need to create larger groups, perhaps size 4, and students will decide on which print will go ahead.

Pathways for all: This project is really interesting but I wouldn’t describe it as easy. It fits more into the “hard fun” category first described by Seymour Papert and further pursued by Burker et al. Also, Paulo Blickstein & Marcelo Worsley warn us that most children are not hackers and good teachers should provide alternative pathways, something to suit all. It’s good to challenge students to leave their comfort zone but if we make it too hard then some are likely to shut down. This leads on to the next points.

SOME BRANCHING ALTERNATIVE OPTIONS

Turtle Art Colouring in: The patterns can be coloured in at the Turtle Art stage using the start fill and end fill blocks. There is room for artistic expression here.

This colouring has been done by Turtle Art

Shape making: Barry Newell has written a lovely book called “Turtle Confusion” which contains 40 shapes that gradually increase in complexity. Shape 1 is a square. From shape 16 on the shapes become combinations of earlier shapes. This sheet provides different levels of complexity and in that way suits a mixed ability class. I’m in the process of developing a new sheet based partly on Barry’s 40 shapes and partly on some of the shapes shown in the picture above, taken from the Turtle Art Tiles Project Guide.

Shape 32 from Barry Newell's sheet is composed from lines, squares and an octogon.

My refactored Barry Newell sheet showing pathways between shapes

Group work: Students should sometimes work individually (eg. when learning Turtle Art initially), sometimes in groups of two (eg. when working on more complex shapes) and sometimes in larger groups (eg. when working with the 3D printer and clay).

Open Source: At some stage I should make the Turtle Art work that the more capable students have produced available to all. Otherwise some of the less capable students won’t end up with a good design to go to the next stage.

Paper and pencil work from 3D printed templates: Instead of the clay step some students might opt for a paper and coloured pencil alternative. That is, using a modified 3D print to trace the pattern onto paper and then creatively colouring it in. For those who choose this path it would be better if their 3D print had narrow walls, which are set at the Turtle Art step (default pensize is 4, reset to 1). So there needs to be planning ahead for this option.

Actually, this is an old one I did use cardboard templates (hexagon, square, triangle)

Necklace option: I could offer students the choice of making a 3D printed necklace, rather than a clay tile finished product. This is described in Josh’s “More Fun” book using Beetle Blocks software (pp. 86-88) but that could be adapted easily to Turtle Art software.

Here are 3 random sized outputs of a rotated heptagon necklace in the slicer and after printing.

All of this strikes me as a pretty reasonable outline for my Inventiveness class – motivating, multifaceted learning and a safety net for challenged students. In the process I’ve revisited some of my established skills and learnt some new ones too.

Reference:
Blickstein, Paulo and Worsley, Marcelo. Children Are Not Hackers (2016)
Burker, Josh Invent to Learn Guide to Fun (2015), pp. 107-113
Burker, Josh Invent to Learn Guide to MORE Fun (2018), pp. 86-88
Newell, Barry. Turtle Confusion (1988)
Stager, Gary & Martinez, Sylvia. Turtle Art Tiles Project Guide (adapted from the original Josh Burker article)

Software:
Turtle Art https://www.playfulinvention.com/webturtleart/
Tinkercad https://www.tinkercad.com/
PrusaSlicer https://help.prusa3d.com/article/download-prusaslicer_2220