Looking for African American History on Thingiverse

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture opened September 24, 2016 in Washington D.C. It is the only national museum devoted exclusively to documenting African American life, history and culture.

In order to celebrate the opening, I searched Thingiverse for items related to African American history and culture and found only a handful of models. 3D printing repositories like Thingiverse are great for pop culture but they lack depth for education. Imagine how great it would be if schools across the country could go on Thingiverse next week and 3D print a rich diversity of models  related to African American history with text and video that explains the importance of these items. Imagine if educators could 3D print miniature museum exhibits of their own to share in the classroom.

The lack of models provides a great opportunity for students to make meaningful contributions to the world by researching, designing, making and sharing models related to African American History and Culture. Please consider challenging your students to create and document new models.

One of the issues is that many relevant models may not have keywords or descriptions that allow them to be easily searched. I’ve created a collection on Thingiverse to start curating models. http://www.thingiverse.com/DesignMakeTeach/collections/african-american-history-and-culture I need help finding models to add to the collection. Please add suggestions in the comments or send me a tweet @DesignMakeTeach.

To kick things off, I created a model in Tinkercad to help commemorate the opening of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of History and Culture. http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1789373