Abstract:

In the Czech Republic, most secondary school students study at secondary schools with a vocationally oriented curriculum. Many of these schools are then technically oriented and their curriculum is focused on acquiring skills and knowledge in the fields of mechanical and civil engineering or electrical engineering and computer science. Meanwhile, all these fields are currently intensively intersecting with each other. For example, information technology and computers are used today in the creation of technical documentation and modeling in all the mentioned areas. Computers control machine tools in engineering as well as modern smart homes. In the same way, engineering products are now heavily used in the construction industry, where, for example, modern intelligent buildings have many moving control elements. In this case, we will look at a specific example of secondary schools with a construction focus and at projects in which students develop in the field of STEM subjects (the term STEM itself is an abbreviation made up of the initial letters: S – science, T-technology, E – engineering, M- mathematics) and at the same time use 3D printing. Secondary school students who work on the described projects start their studies at the age of 14/15 and take the matriculation exam between the ages of 18 and 20.

In our case, we will primarily look at the example of student designs of intelligent buildings with thermal insulation, which is one of the topics studied by students of secondary construction schools and is currently very needed on the labor market. Here, students use a 3D printer to make a model of a thermal bridge and use the simulation program Agros2D to model the spread of heat. The Agros2D program is a freeware program designed specifically for teaching modeling of physical and technical problems. The simulation using the program is supplemented with simple calculations that are used to practice the curriculum of high school physics and mathematics, so that the work on the project leads to the development of students' skills in several subjects from the STEM group. Next, we will look at other examples of the use of 3D printing in STEM education. Next, we will look at how students perceive teaching conceived in this way very positively. Students who work on projects as part of their education achieve a higher level of practical skills in areas such as construction or programming.

Keywords:

STEM subjects, 3D print, technology, civil engineering, experimental learning, project based learning.