Fourth grade art students have recently been working with Sketch Up for Schools Computer-Aided Design (CAD) software on their Chromebooks to create sailboats in an environment. Many of the fourth graders’ finished works are shown in this presentation. Several of the fourth graders will continue working on their boat scenes next week.
Sketch Up for Schools is a free cloud-based software that students access through their school Google accounts. Sketch Up Pro is widely used by architects and structural designers. The student and professional versions of Sketch Up are very similar. As Sketch Up for Schools is geometry-based, students are provided with an educational opportunity in math, as well as a stepping stone toward various professions which employ engineering and architectural 3D modeling software.
Our students make all of their forms with the tools of the program, and are never allowed to use downloaded or pre-constructed forms in their Sketch Up work. The tools the fourth graders have been using include line, rectangle, push-pull, select, flip, offset, rotate, move, scale, and bucket fill (for colors).
One of the photos below shows the steps that Muna Akubue of 4P used to create her boats.
