e-NABLING education: Curricula and models for teaching students to print hands

In January of 2013, a prop maker/puppeteer in US Pacific Northwest collaborated with a carpenter in South Africa to produce the world's first home-created, 3D printed hand. They spread the word of their effort via a video on YouTube and released the designs as open source. In May of 2013, an RIT professor, inspired by the video, created a simple Google Map mashup to link people who needed similar devices with people who'd be willing to print them. And so the e-NABLE project was born. By June of 2016 the e-NABLE Google Plus community had over 8,600 members and e-NABLE had delivered around 2,000 hands to children in 50 countries. Some “e-NABLErs” are students and faculty in middle schools, high schools and colleges around the world. One physical hub of this on-line volunteer effort is the e-NABLE Lab, part of the Center for Media, Art Games Interaction and Creativity (MAGIC) at the Rochester Institute of Technology. The Enable Community Foundation has compiled a collection of curricular models and materials to support the growth of e-NABLE efforts by students and their teachers. This work-in-progress paper will cover the current status of e-NABLE efforts in and out of the classroom. It will then detail the hardware and software needed to create hands and teach courses (a wide range of inexpensive 3D printers and low-cost or free software will suffice). Next it will provide an overview of the types of curricula and materials available for schools around the world to use with students of all ages. Lastly it will detail one particular program, a summer job-training program at the Vertus Charter School in Rochester, New York, in depth as an example of a school-based e-NABLE program that has been successful.