I teach multiple STEM classes at my school and have loved the interface with Project Ignite as well as the ability to take student accounts and design freely in Tinkercad. Please, please, please return things to the way they were. It is virtually impossible as things are now and in no way conducive to a classroom as it currently stands. I'm unclear why the change occurred. I was able to set up multiple classes easily, assign and monitor progress in assigned lessons. Students could search projects and step through the tutorials at their own pace.
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Ms.MSav We need to have our Project Classrooms too.
Best way to sell your products! Easy and completely user fun and friendly.
Why did this have to be eliminated. Studens 3-5 devastasted! Me Too!!!
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John Helfen Hi @Russell Thompson,
I wanted to let everyone that we are sad to see Project Ignite go as well. We truly appreciate the students and teachers who were using Project Ignite and we are working to provide the best experience possible for our users.
We have transferred many of the features of Project Ignite to Tinkercad already and we look forward to expanding the learning content in Tinkercad the way we had with Project Ignite.
- All Tinkercad projects now use the Project Ignite format with lesson instructions along the left side of the browser.
- Project Ignite lesson that were transferred can be found here on the Tinkercad site: https://www.tinkercad.com/learn/projects#/project-gallery;collectionId=OY5L5E8IRXTI47Z
- Classroom codes have been replaced by the Tinkercad Invitation code
- Progress tracking has been replaced with the ability for teachers to see each of their moderated student designs from the teacher account.
- If a student begins a lesson, stops, then returns to the same lesson they will pick up where they left off.
You can find additional information about this change at: https://support.tinkercad.com/hc/en-us/sections/207348968-Project-Ignite
If there are additional questions please let us know, we are happy to help in any way we can.
Thanks,
John
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Michael Spano Hello @John Helfen - Autodesk,
While I appreciate the explanation I do want to also express my own feelings about the move away from Project Ignite. I understand that many features that Autodesk may feel are important have made their way into integration with TinkerCad, unfortunately, the features that didn't are what really made educators gravitate to the software. As someone who teaches in Cycles and will see close to 400 students in a single school year, I found that having separate classrooms in Project Ignite and the ability to not only assign a project/lesson but also link it to Google Classroom was a great feature that was used everyday. Now I have a long list of almost 1000 students who aren't organized in any way that I'm supposed to be able to moderate and it will only grow each year. Also, the fact that I have absolutely no access to any account for a student 13 or older is a bit cumbersome now. At least in Project Ignite students 13 or older were still part of the class I created and I would be able to still see and assign lessons to them. The fact that I teach 7th grade means that half my students are 12 and the other half are 13 which can really muddy up the flow in the classroom.
With this said I do like the fact that now moderated accounts can now be clicked on and the teacher has access to see the student's designs. If this feature could be pushed out in a similar fashion to classes or groups of students of all ages it sure would make organizing students better and make the use of your program safer for the school, teacher and students.
Thanks for your time!
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millhouses I am also struggling to adapt to the changes with my classes. It greatly helped my students to work through the "Let's Learn Tinkercad" lessons--especially the ones involving the alignment tool. Please add more basic lessons and include more practice with scaling all or part of an object as well as using the alignment tool. Their own projects are more viable and of higher quality after doing those lessons.
Meanwhile, can you tell me which guided projects are good for practicing with the alignment tool? I have looked at a few but have not found a great one for that skill/feature.
Thank you!
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John Helfen hi Millhouses,
We have not removed the Let's Learn Tinkercad project, in fact it has been updated for TInkercad v2 and is still one of our most used projects.
This project can be found here: https://www.tinkercad.com/learn/projects#/project/O8XV0X1IRXTXGIH;collectionId=OY5L5E8IRXTI47Z
Hope this helps.
Thanks
John
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sslough I have to say that I spent almost a month looking for the Project Ignite lessons, and only found them when I stumbled upon this series of questions. Whatever you have done with Project Ignite, it is impossible to find and that is a shame. It does not show up on the left side of my screen under the lessons, if I search for Project Ignite I get one enty but when I select it, the link takes me no where. I love using TinkerCAD, but the lessons in Project Ignite were essential in walking my students through the skills necessary for them to utilize TinkerCAD on their own. PLEASE re-organize things so that Project Ignite can actually be found! I have now book marked the lesson series so I am OK, but others will need access!
Thank you,
Stephanie Slough
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Denise Dedini John Helfen:
Please check your link to "Let's Learn Tinkercad." It does not work. And now we are in the middle of another academic quarter with students ready to learn and they are not able to access the required lessons. Autodesk has no idea what Tinkercad is when I called for help. Can we PLEASE get a workable link so our students can access these lessons?
Thank you,
Denise Dedini
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John Helfen Hi Denise,
I just tested the Let's Learn Tinkercad project and it works fine for me. I have also not heard anyone else having an issue with it.
Also, I am not sure who you spoke with at Autodesk, but I am sorry your experience wasn't awesome. I am happy to help figure out what's happening.
Could you tell me what specifically isn't working?
Is this happening on all computers?
Thanks,
John
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sslough Hello John Helfen,
Just to let you know... there are others having issues with Let's Learn TinkerCAD. The link you have provided to the Project Ignite lessons has not worked for at least the past 2 weeks (Project Ignite lesson that were transferred can be found here on the Tinkercad site: https://www.tinkercad.com/learn/projects#/project-gallery;collectionId=OY5L5E8IRXTI47Z ). It simply takes people to their own home page. I love the Project Ignite lessons, the students loved the lessons, and they make TinkerCAD available to students of all ages. I am very disappointed that for whatever reason they have been removed. It was bad enough that the Project Ignite website was taken down; as stated above, the extras it provided teachers really made TinkerCAD worth using. I need to have a website I can rely on, not one that I am not sure will be available when my students walk through the door. Please do something to make these lessons available again.
Thank you,
Stephanie Slough
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Denise Dedini Fellow teachers: I did a little backward mapping of the link and figured out where to find the tutorial we are looking for. It can be found here: https://www.tinkercad.com/learn/projects#/learn/overview/O8XV0X1IRXTXGIH;collectionId=OY5L5E8IRXTI47Z
I hope this helps.
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Michael Spano Side not but still related to the change in how this all works.
Has anyone else noticed that the process of signing students up is a bit outlandish. I understand needing to be FERPA compliant and all but when you teach primarily 7th grade students who are under the age of 13 it is very hard to activate the accounts. My design teacher gets an email for every student saying that after so many days the student's account will be closed if the activation letter isn't printed, signed and mailed in OR the teacher has to pay some change per student to verify the accounts. Unfortunately, we cannot rely on parents to do this.
Also, with the email verification coming up as per the message that pops up upon log in. Our 7th grade students don't have email. How will they verify the email if they can't receive email? We currently sign up using the student's Google account which is in the form of an email. Not everyone at that age has access to email at all.
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Guillermo Melantoni First of all, accounts can get activated using the invitation code basically immediately after the students sign up. We still encourage the parents to get involved, since the kid may want to keep working on Tinkercad after the class assignment is done, and keeping that kid under a teacher's moderation doesn't sound right (for the teacher). So I feel you missed that piece. If you go to Teach, you can identify yourself as a teacher and after that you can produce an Invitation Code. Once the students create their account (and I insist on the idea of them adding a parent as the recipient of the email for moderation), they will see a field to introduce an Invitation Code. That's all.
By the way, verification is not needed for under 13, since we don't store an email from them. Also students over 13 that sign in via a social provider (like Google) will not require verification either, since their gmail would have already been verified by Google.
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Michael Spano Hello Guillermo,
I think you are overestimating the level of interest parents have at this level or that a parent has email (yes we have parents who have no internet at home and no email). We run on 30 Day cycles for our related arts classes. We don't have all school year to hope for verification from the parents. In order to get the curriculum required in the time constraint we need to hit the ground running on day one. In the past the student would create their accounts using the class code provided by the teacher. This would automatically input the teacher's email and allow the teacher to moderate the student's work and account. Now, the students create the account first and then add themselves using the teacher's code. I understand that using the code gives them access to the account immediately but it is confusing that the email would still go out requesting verification.
In my opinion, if Tinkercad really wanted to cater to education there would be a way to either bulk create accounts or have the option to use single sign on with Google for all students. There would also be a way to create "classes" or groups and add ALL students to the classes. Just because a student is 13+ doesn't mean they shouldn't be monitored in a school settings.
I don't think Project Ignite was a perfect system but it was certainly better at organizing classes of students and was much quicker to get started, which is something we need in our situation.
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