As a computer teacher who teaches a semester of computer aided design, I wanted to share a program which would be a great project addition to a math classroom. My 7th grade students practice so many skills in this unit, and their projects look amazing!
Creating a professional floorplan is very easy with Floorplanner. I scaffold with my students measuring my classroom and making a floorplan with the web app. Then students measure other classrooms on campus to create a model of another classroom on their own. By doing a floorplan students practice a lot of math skills. They practice measuring accurately, scaling down the size of a room, and converting inches to feet and feet to inches.
The program is easy to use and looks very nice. It has a lot of furniture built in and you can customize a lot of options. It is limited in scope which makes it an easy addition to any classroom (not only a computer classroom).
- We first make a model using graph paper.
- Students take the model to create using the computer.
- They create in 2D
- Floorplanner creates a 3D model with the press of a button
(Click on the above pictures for a larger view).