3D printers as an educational tool in gifted education: effective use, problems and suggestions

Nowadays, when the production of knowledge is increasing rapidly, new production technologies have become extremely important to create useful products. The changing human needs and desires to produce many products in a short time enable countries to produce different technologies and integrate them into daily life. The aim of this research is to investigate teachers' and students' views on the educational contributions of using 3D design programs and 3D printers A mixed research method was used within a convergent parallel design. For the quantitative part of the study, a survey was conducted with 108 students. Then, 10 gifted students were randomly selected among the students participating in the survey and interviews were conducted. Interviews were also conducted with 3 teachers worked in Science and Art Centers (SACs) where educated gifted students in Turkey. The data were collected and analyzed through questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. According to the results of the research, it appears that 3D design technologies play an important role in the development of students' knowledge and skills, students use these technologies quite a lot when producing projects or designing the products of their projects, and this situation motivates them in the project production process. In addition, appears that students can print their own course materials to learn.