Industrial Arts Teachers are in a tough spot. With the adoption of the Michigan Merit Curriculum, students are now expected to learn more than just basic tool skills and to come home with some nifty projects. Teachers need to provide students with authentic real world problems to solve. Students need to use appropriate and relevant tools. One way of accomplishing many facets of the Michigan Merit Curriculum for Applied arts is to have students design. Comlicated Computer Aided Drawing (CAD) tools may be too complicated for some students (and teachers) or require too much time to learn. Google Sketch Up is a free/low cost software package that is easy to learn that will give students great experiences while integrating many subjects. Please watch the following videos to gain a better understanding of how and why Sketchup should be integrated into Applied Art Class Rooms.






If you are intersted in a very quick demo of Google Sketch Up software, please watch the video I created below.

If you have trouble viewing this video please click on the following link

sketchup demo



For a more indepth look at how Google Sketch Up can be used, please watch the Google created video below.



Any Questions or Comments on this presentation, please direct them to mswanson@portageps.org