The GE Additive Education Program’s (AEP) third cycle – 2019/2020 – will grant polymer 3D printing packages to 982 primary and secondary schools and reach 793,000 primary and secondary school students in 23 countries. Since its foundation in 2017, over 1,296,000 students and 2,000 schools in 36 countries have benefitted from the AEP.
The top five countries receiving printers in this cycle are; the United States, Australia, Canada, Spain and the Republic of Ireland.
The AEP aims to build an ecosystem for 3D printing in education by networking students, machines and content via an online platform, the Polar Cloud. Schools granted a package receive hardware, software and science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics (STEAM) curriculum and will be delivered from June through August 2019.
Participating schools will join the Polar Cloud as a premium member and access tools, software and applications in a collaborative and secure environment and receive either a Dremel Digilab 3D45 or a Monoprice Voxel polymer 3D printer, filament, STEAM curriculum and lesson plans from STEAMtrax and Tinkercad.
Each participating school will have a School Store on the Polar Cloud, where students’ models may be showcased and sold with 100% of the proceeds going to their school. Schools also have a dashboard for managing activities and data on student engagement, designs, prints and other key performance indicators.
