For the past 10 years I have been working with at-risk and neurodiverse young people from about the 6th grade through high school. Neurodiverse students have a particularly difficult time after leaving high school.

This summer, for the first time, we initiated a "Fellowship" program for 3 high school graduates. This program is designed to get them used to workplace requirements like being on time and staying focused on assigned tasks, etc.

Of the three, I'd only had previous contact with one of them.

The student with whom I'd already taught MOI3d (Student #1) began bringing his MOI3D designs into Blender for the sole purpose of rendering over the past year. He is completely self taught in Blender.

3D design and MOI3D was completely new to the young man I am discussing in this post (Student #2), His first lesson was on 6/30/22. It's a 3-day a week program and my portion of their training is +- 1 hour. Actual guided instruction is less than that, The reason I point out the limited time is to emphasize how quickly many of our students can learn MOI3D.

What is really remarkable about the dynamics of this 3 person team is how much peer-to-peer mentoring is happening in the last TWO days, with Student #1 teaching Student #2 how to bring their design into Blender for rendering. We encourage peer-to-peer interaction; but, Blender is REALLY complex to a complete novice and to see how a common love of design is bringing together students who can have difficulty with interpersonal interaction is amazing to see.

There is something very unique and special about the MOI3D UI that draws at-risk kids into the creative process in such an inviting way. It's more than just learning design skills. It's actually transformational in broad areas of their lives.

Here are images of the original MOI3D and Rendered versions of the new fellowship participant's project. I am really proud of both of these guys!

This will be my last month working directly with an organization. While I have been unable to publicly release the MOI3D curriculum I originally developed in 2012, I will now be free to bring out a new MOI3D course that builds upon that decade of wonderfully rewarding experience. We are forever indebted to Michael for creating a UI that has makes it so easy and fun to teach.

Hi Tom, this is such a great way to use MOI, thank you for all your work teaching and coaching these kids!

Can't believe it's been 10 years already, the years are rushing by...

Thanks,
- Michael

"Can't believe it's been 10 years already, the years are rushing by..."

They sure have gone quickly!

My quest for finding a 3D design application started years before I found Moment of Inspiration.

In fact, right beside me, I have Rhinoceros V1.1. But, for some reason I just could not get the hang of it at the time. I also tried something I think was called TrueVision, Alibre and finally, Cubify Invent, just before finding MOI3D in 2012.

I do have to take my hat off to CosmicBlobs, which was a children's 3D design application by Scott Harris of Solidworks that was enormous fun. I blogged about that one before Dessault killed it. I loved CosmicBlobs and keep in touch with Scott who also created Onshape. My fellow teacher has experimented with trying Onshape for the certification benefits.

While there is real merit in Onshape for parametric modeling, it cannot compare with Moment of Inspiration when it comes to bringing the excitement of being able to easily learn 3D for our students.

It was a very wise decision to abandon the standard Windows interface for the palette system It makes all the difference in the world when it comes to being able to quickly learn while still having all the precision of the Onshapes and Solidworks of the world. It truly has been transformational for many hundreds of students who never dreamed they could ever learn 3D design.

I am thankful I found MOI3D in 2012 and I hope to be able to find a way to introduce it to many more in the future.

Thanks,

Tom