Drawing sculptures

SALEM, N.H. — Next week, Salem High art students' creations will emerge seemingly out of thin air.

The teenagers will be creating kinetic sculptures with interconnecting gears and moving parts using only a pen.

They will, however, be state-of-the-art 3D pens, which release a thin plastic thread from the pen's tip that hardens two or three seconds.

"It's always neat when you have something new or different and you see where the students take it. I may have an idea, but they can go in a completely different direction," teacher Lyn Paolino said.

Paolino and her students are able to experiment with the new technology through donations from strangers and companies across the country.

Donors Choose is a nonprofit that enables teachers to ask for donations for different projects from a wide base of possible donors. Since it was launched in 2000, more than 600,000 proposals ranging from robotics kits to copies of "Little House on the Prairie" have been fulfilled.

Paolino created a campaign on Donors Choose last month to pay for six pens and varying colors of malleable plastic, which cost just under $400.

The 3D pens are Salem High's to keep. Paolino is already devising projects using them in her jewelry course and commercial art class. The tool will help meld creativity with STEM concepts like structural design and engineering, which the instructor believes will appeal to different students.

"In many ways, the artistic process is similar to the scientific method. You can have problems with your materials, you have to examine what you're doing and how you'll do it," Paolino said. "This is just a different way of doing what we do in my class all of the time."

The art teacher said that she thinks of the different items she's receiving from this and past Donors Choose donations as "bonuses" for her students. She also wrote in her pen proposal that her classrooms are filled with students with different learning styles and mixed abilities.

Educators' desires to reach different learners while on often tight school district budgets is part of why Donors Choose was started, according to spokesperson Chris Pearsall. The average teacher spends $500 out of their own pocket, according to the Education Market Association.

"We know that teachers are going to go to the ends of the earth for their students, and we want to help lighten that load," Pearsell said.

Donors Choose connects citizen and corporate donors with projects they may be interested in. People from Chicago and Kentucky donated money towards the purchase of Salem's pens, as well as the 3Doodler company itself.

"Accessibility in education is extremely important to us, and we're putting our money where our mouth is," said Leah Wyman, 3Doodler's head of their educational department.

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