Webinar: Teaching the A in STEAM with Tinkercad

Presenters: Kellyanne Mahoney & Dr. Nettrice Gaskins

How can Tinkercad, the free, easy-to-use app for 3D design, electronics, and coding, be used in the classroom to infuse the arts with other subjects in the production of meaningful projects? Kellyanne Mahoney, Youth Program Specialist at Autodesk, and Dr. Nettrice Gaskins, artist, educator, and BUILDer in Residence at the Autodesk Technology Centers, will share real-life examples of how teachers can use Tinkercad as a creativity tool to align their lessons with both ISTE Standards and National Core Art Standards. They will also explore Nettrice’s design process as she shares how she used Tinkercad to design a giant abacus, which is part of a large-scale public art project meant to transform ordinary public places into exciting learning environments that help children get an early start in mathematics. Through this presentation, Kellyanne and Nettrice hope to engage the audience in a discussion about how design thinking, creativity, communication, and artistic skills can deepen and reinforce math and science understanding.

View Presentation Slides HERE

Dr. Nettrice Gaskins is an artist whose work explores how to generate art using algorithms in different ways, especially through coding. She also teaches, writes, “fabs” or makes, and does other things. She has taught multimedia, computational media, visual art, and even Advanced Placement Computer Science Principles with high school students who majored in the arts. She earned a BFA in Computer Graphics with Honors from Pratt Institute in 1992 and an MFA in Art and Technology from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1994. She received a doctorate in Digital Media from Georgia Tech in 2014. She has taught at the secondary and post-secondary levels in the Boston Public Schools and at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Currently, Dr. Gaskins is a program manager at the Fab Foundation and an artist-in-residence at the Autodesk Technology Center on behalf of MathTalk, a group that creates public art that encourages adults and children to enjoy, explore, and talk about the math in their own backyards. She will publish her first full-length book in the winter through MIT Press.

Kellyanne Mahoney is a National Board Certified Teacher and experienced curriculum developer who spent 13 years working in the Boston Public Schools. She currently serves as a Youth Program Specialist for Autodesk, focusing on creating K-12 STEAM learning content, managing education campaigns and programs, facilitating professional development for educators, and building strong relationships with the New England education community and beyond. For the past several years, Kellyanne’s work has also been centered on using design thinking to bridge the problems faced in schools with the problem of creating equitable onramps into the innovation economy for students.