The best free tool for teaching concepts of 3D modeling
Community Review for Tinkercad
My Take
I thoroughly enjoy teaching my kids to use TinkerCAD. It's FREE, which means the price is right for any school budget. The fact that it's entirely online means there's no software to license or install, which keeps our IT department happy.
The site does offer a "teacher code" for educators, but nowhere could I find instructions on how students could/should actually USE that code to create a classroom environment or shared object library. I wish they would fix that. It would simplify things enormously.
How I Use It
I teach STEM (Engineering) to grades 7-9. Of the 150 students I'm teaching this year, all but two of them were new to 3D modeling. (Interestingly, the two students who DID have 3D modeling experience were TinkerCAD users ... it's where they learned.) I use TinkerCAD to give students an opportunity to learn the basics of 3D modeling, using additive and subractive methods to create 3D geometry, and to learn the steps involved in creating objects to be 3D-printed.