3D or 3-D or 3d?

In this post, we dive into Google Books Ngram Viewer to learn a little more about the 3D phenomeon. Ngram viewer does a clever job of tracking words, phrases, or letter combinations in books digitized by Google and giving us some unique insights on language and trends. These digital corpora are updated yearly, and currently Ngram Viewer houses more than five million books (through 2012).

Let’s begin by using Ngram Viewer to compare the frequency of use for the terms 3D and 3-D—appearing in books (fiction and non-fiction) over time. This will provide interesting insight about contemporary cultural memes (see interactive charts below):

3D versus 3-D

As one can see, based on a snapshot of fiction and non-fiction books, “3D” is rapidly replacing “3-D” as a norm. 

Similarly, “3D is also replacing the lower case “3d” in our modern lexicon, as shown below:

3D versus 3d

3D as Advantage

In our third post in this series about 3D in Turkey, and the story of Okulda3D, we delve into a critical point. 

In an age of unprecedented competition for student enrollment and dollars, schools everywhere need a comparative advantage. An edge. Enter Okulda3D. Part of the reason for their success in reaching schools is that they offered a sense of the upscale, something out-of-the-ordinary. To potential students and their parents, there is no doubt that their installations are perceived as offering something worthwhile, something attention getting, a form of non-vanilla education.  (See the pictures in our previous post as a clear example.) 

In the U.S., we tend to package new technologies (e.g., 3D) in old containers (traditional classroom settings). Doing so creates an uncomfortable overlay—strange bedfellows, if you will. Not so with Okulda 3D, operating in Istanbul. Okulda’s founder, Kerem Özdagistanli, has sold 3D education solutions to more than 250+ institutions in Turkey, with no end of that upwards spiral in sight. Why is Okulda so effective at promoting 3D well, so prolifically? It’s because they are promoting advantage. An advantage in learning. Aesthetic advantage. And 3D, of course, is its own advantage in education.

Doing 3D Well

 “To become the most successful integrator of educational 3D in the world takes moxie,” I wrote last week. I was describing Okulda 3D, operating in Istanbul. Okulda’s founder, Kerem Özdagistanli, has sold 3D education solutions to more than 250+ institutions in Turkey, with no end of that upwards spiral in sight. This begs two questions: “What does Okulda do that is so unique?” and “How does that differ from the work of others?”

In Search of the Secret Sauce

First, Okulda specializes. They concentrate on the 3D education. They have the know-how to make installations successful. “We do work with partners [like smartboard, furniture, projector, and computer companies], but we don’t sell anything else,” explains Mr. Özdagistanli. “We are experts, and we focus on our main business, the 3D education area.” He adds: [In Turkish culture] “it is common for many salespeople to claim that they can ‘do’ 3D: ‘We can do that also,’ is the refrain.” But they simply can’t do 3D as well, as successfully, or as stylishly, as Okulda.

It About Flair

The more I look at Okulda, the more I realize that they don’t sell vanilla 3D solutions. They sell 3D with flair. Call it what you want. Style. Verve. Dash. Panache. It’s 3D with a small touch of genius. First, it works. Second, these installations look good. Very good. It’s 3D with a certain flair. See some of their 250+ installation examples below, to understand what I am saying:

World’s Best Educational 3D Integrator (1)

There are a lot of good things happening with 3D across the world, yet I find that most of the great stories about 3D in classrooms somehow seem to fly under the radar. Yes, good things are in fact happening, but often no one knows about them. Rarely do successes get the broad recognition they deserve.  It's for that reason that I am continuing our 3D School Success Stories series once again

*****

To become the most successful integrator of educational 3D in the world takes moxie. It also requires a great understanding of the educational customer, along with a firm handle on the technology itself.  Meet Kerem Özdagistanli, General Manager of OKULDA 3D in Turkey.

I have been studying this man’s effort for some years now, observing from afar. He is the real deal. An executive in a large firm, a number of years ago Mr. Özdagistanli grew restless. He needed to reach out, do more, and become more. He spent a year or so studying, preparing, and planning and then broke out on his own to create Okulda 3D, a serious 3D integration service for the education market in Istanbul. And there is no one better.

Kerem Özdagistanli. General Manager of Okulda3D

To date, Mr. Özdagistanli has sold 3D education solutions to more than 250 institutions in Turkey, with no end of that sales spiral in sight. (In Turkey, most of Okulda’s customer are “colleges.” They appear to be similar to large, multi-site K12 schools in the U.S. See this link to see the immense size of some of these customer institutions.) “Now, some schools are so satisfied working with us, that they decided all new colleges which are being built must have 3D Labs,” states Mr. Özdagistanli. Of course, a picture is worth a thousand words, so check out this customer website.

Most of the installations sold by Okulda are focused on science instruction. Their many customers currently utilize Xpand active glasses, DesignMate content, and proven hardware components, including BenQ. “As an integrator,” says Özdagistanli, “my most common problem is the high cost of hardware.” But with hundreds of already successful customer projects underway, he has earned the trust of the educators in Turkey. He adds: “When customers suggest us to other customers—that’s the best advertisement possible—so we are growing very fast.”

Mr. Özdagistanli believes that Turkey is now well positioned to be fertile soil for exploring the broader role of 3D in education, for producing hardware and content case studies, and for engaging in future 3D learning research.

I believe that Kerem Özdagistanli is the most successful integrator of educational 3D in the world. Now you know just a few of the reasons why I say this. In my coming posts , we will explore what Okulda does that is unique and how that differs from the work of other integrators. In a final post, we will unpack what the rest of the world can learn from Mr. Özdagistanli powerful strategies for promoting 3D in education. 

Future-Talk 3D Worldview

Добрый день      Bom dia   您好مرحبا   こんにちは Bienvenidos

The Future-Talk 3D blog serves a diverse international audience interested in educational 3D. Our readers might be interested in seeing which countries were our top blog visitors during 2014. Based on web impressions for the 2014 calendar year, here is how the data shape up:

It is worthwhile to note that Russia has really picked up the pace this year; that, over the years, there is a relentless back-and-forth wrestling match between the other countries on this list; and that China moved into the top ten viewing countries for the first time, replacing Australia.

Are there any surprises here? Or are these just “the usual suspects?” What do you think? Please comment.

Of course, this chart only represents the top ten. Many hundreds of other visitors have frequented this blog, coming from countries all over the world. Future-Talk 3D blog has been visited by nearly every country in North, South, and Central America. The same is true for Europe; the entire Middle East is also broadly represented. Most of Asia has visited us, as well as more than 16 countries from Africa.  

I want to thank you for your deep and committed interest in 3D in education. Please write me, let me know what you are doing in your country. I would love to feature some interviews in 2015.

FT3D Word Cloud

Here’s a graphic word cloud of all the key words or themes in our Future-Talk 3D blog during the year 2014.  The more the word is found, the larger it appears in this word cloud. It's good to see what's most important--you can tell from its size! The word cloud is interactive, so explore a bit!

It’s quite interesting to visualize, in this way, the recurring themes and concepts that have emerged as memes from Future-Talk 3D this last year. It’s like putting your fingers on the pulse of what’s happening with educational 3D—and taking a read.

Editor's Choice

At the start of every new year, I thoughtfully highlight a single post or series from the previous year -- a post that didn't quite make it into our 2014 top ten, but offers an important educationally focused 3D message, nevertheless.

It's a post that carries the kind of message that I would hope readers would want to take time to carefully re-read and mull over. The post I recommend for Editor’s Choice this year is the two-part series Nevada State Flies High and Nevada State 2. Enjoy!

Best of Future-Talk 3D 2014

It’s been another thriving year for the Future-Talk 3D blog, so it is fitting to reflect on the most popular topical posts of 2014.  The top eight posts are presented below, in order of most web impressions received last year:

What the 3D Kids Say
Mature Strategies (2)
A zView from zSpace
Crowded in zSpace
Chasing Efficiency: Learning with 3D
ISTE SIG3D Webinar
Beyond the 3D Bubble
When 3D Falls Short

Actually, it’s quite thought provoking to speculate as to why these particular topics were “top of mind” in 2014 for the diverse international audience that regularly follows this blog. Certainly, these topics might be worthy of re-reading. Please let us know your hypothesis or thinking by posting a short comment.

Learning About 3D

In classrooms, educators use 3D for teaching difficult subjects. We call this visualization. In technology education or ICT classrooms, students employ 3D to create authentic products using the tools of the trade, e.g., 3D cameras, 3D video cameras, 3D scanners, and 3D design software. We call this student content creation. Increasingly, students are not only learning with 3D or creating 3D content—they are learning about 3D technology itself. 

The previous three posts in this series focus on the use Google Trends as a tools for learning about 3D in classrooms. (In a future post, I will also show how educators or business leaders can use another tool, Google Books nGram Viewer, to learn more about 3D.) 

These are simple examples, but Google Trends is a powerful tool for learning about 3D and for exploring 3D potential in the marketplace. Two additional resources will support your efforts to apply Google Trends in your own setting:

1. See this support guide for using Google Trends and constructing/conducting effective Google Trend searches.
2. See this article for ideas on how to use Google Trends to support your educational or business goals.

What's Hot in 3D?

In this week's post, let’s continue exploring Google Trends to learn more about 3D. This week's question is really interesting: “What are the topics that seem to be rising to the top in all of these 3D searches, as Google tracks them?”

Based on searches for each spelling (3-D or 3D), we can see some obvious and less than obvious trends:

3-D

3D

Where is 3D?

In this post, let’s continue exploring Google Trends to learn about which countries appear to have more grassroots interest in 3D. Based on searches for each spelling (3-D or 3D), we can see some obvious and less than obvious trends:

3-D


3D
Map Over Time:

What might this all mean? There aren’t many surprises here, but perhaps two require an explanation:

1) Turkey does indeed seem to be a hot spot these days for 3D popularity (see my new series on 3D in Turkey, starting in January

2) Romania. Well, Romania. I know Romania has an emerging 3D technology industry,, but my blog has experienced a lot of suspicious referrer spam from Romania. That makes sense when you think about it-- I recently attended an FBI briefing on cybercrime, and Romania was on the top of their black hat list, identified as the country with the most cybercrime activity.

3. Guess what? Using the modern “3D” search term instead of the rapidly disappearing anachronistic “3-D” spelling, the U.S. doesn’t even make the top ten list.

Is it 3D or 3-D?

One of the most useful tools for learning about 3D is Google Trends. Google Trends is a Google-based search utility that shows how frequently a search phrase is entered from various parts of the world.  Quoting from Wikipedia, “the horizontal axis of the main graph represents time (starting from 2004), and the vertical is how often a term is searched for relative to the total number of searches, globally.” Using Google Trends, a plethora of fruitful questions become possible exploration avenues:

• Is 3D a more preferable spelling? Or is 3-D best? 
• How often has either term been used in searches? 
• What countries seem to offer the most interest in searching for information about 3D? 
• What are the topics that seem to be rising to the top? 
• How is 3D trending?

Let’s begin by exploring Google Trends to learn about the term '3D' itself. Comparing the terms 3D and 3-D—used as search terms over time—provides some interesting insight (see interactive charts below):

x x

What does this all mean? As you can see, the use of the spelling “3-D is on a downward spiral, while the use of the spelling “3D” has continued to find itself commonplace. Why is that? Probably because many editorial style guidelines have now standardized on “3D” as a simpler approach to referring to 3D, while losing nothing in the meaning. In the long run, simplicity always wins out over complexity in our lexicon.

Another possible interpretation of these data is that the “death of 3D” that we often hear about is clearly exaggerated. Interest in “all things 3D” is here to stay, although it still experiences its expected cyclical highs and lows.

In Schools: 3D Printing (3)

Signing Up for the “Printing in 3D” Marching Band

For those of you who are “all in” or just want to learn a bit more, here are a few more resources you can explore:

• Read chapter seven of Gary Stager’s new book, Invent to Learn. Chapter seven is a valuable primer for the educational use of printing in 3D, one replete with ideas, obstacles, and solutions for moving printing in 3D forward within educational settings.

• Also, scour the @3DPrinter site for news, ideas, and trends in this field.

• Are you a visual learner? Check out this extremely informative infographic on 3D printing.

My sense of things is that this technology is not disbanding, like a tired, aging, small-town marching band. No, printing in 3D is going to grow, fill its ranks with energetic new recruits, begin quickstepping, and get bigger—drumming straight to the national competition of relevance—and beyond. 

In Schools: 3D Printing (2)

3D Printing Maneuvers into Schools

In schools, printing in 3D does seem to be following expected routines of adoption, patterns that are quite familiar to those of us in the education space:

Peppered Interest.

Interested schools, curious principals, or impassioned teachers just buy them. You may find one, two or three 3D printers peppered around a school district—largely in the hands of a well-funded innovator, a magnet school, or a well-connected charter school.

Concentrated Interest.

Like some school districts I know on the East coast, leaders have concentrated 3D printers at a single grade level. For example, every high school has a 3D printer in one district, but none in any other schools. In another example, every middle school has been outfitted with a makerspace (included with that, a 3D printer); but none exist in elementary or high schools.

Laser-focused Interest.

Some districts I know in Texas are afraid of the high price tag of 3D printers—and the voracious costs of consumables, so they purchase a single high-end 3D printing solution for their regional career and tech center, while forbidding local schools to make similar investments. If other schools want to do printing in 3D, they can contract with the regional career and tech center.

Over the last year, I have attended every 3D-printing session possible at national conferences. I have even presented a few. And here’s what I know: It’s still largely in the marching band phase; there lots of folks buying these, but they are still not sure how to use them well, nor are they well equipped to handle the ongoing costs or TCO. BYTK.

There are a number of super stars, doing amazing things with printing in 3D, but they are hard to find. Both ISTE and COSN are among the organizations hoping to corral these folks and create venues for sharing, growing, and disseminating educational successes.

Rosetta in 3D

It’s current events time!

It looks like the Rosetta landing was viewed in 3D by President Hollande of France, along with other dignitaries.

It looks like they are using anaglyph glasses, which are old school, yet convenient for mass audiences.

Also, here's a useful link for the classroom: many of the Philae pics are freely available in 3D, too. 

In Schools: 3D Printing

The 3D printer craze continues its enthused cadence, parading through the halls of schools nation-wide, with no apparent sign of losing formation. The next three posts feature the latest and most useful news bytes and perspectives about printing in 3D in schools.

We will begin with a few random tidbits, hopefully items of interest to many of our readers:

NEO3DO Quicksteps to Printing in 3D

NEO3DO is touting a Print Preview app, an STL file viewer that allows for naked eye 3D interactivity. It works on all android devices and, soon, also on Apple devices. Of course, when using the glasses-free NEO3DO, it enables full autostereoscopic 3D viewing. This is a game changer for schools, by viewing student-created prototypes before for actually printing in 3D.  This translates well into classrooms, saving time, money, and scarce consumables.

COSN and ISTE Interest March Forward

Printing in 3D continues to please the crowds within the largest professional educational technology organizations, as well. ISTE's 3D Network recently conducted a very informative webinar on printing in 3D, featuring 3D printing expert Chad Norman, while COSN will be including printing in 3D as a featured topic within their 2015 EdTechNext Report on 3D in learning.

VREP Drums into 3D Printing

Even the large, Iowa-based VREP program is marching to the beat, shifting from pure 3D design on displays to options for outputting student designs to 3D printers. For the first time, they offered breakout sessions on 3D printing at their past VREP Showcase. Their 2015 showcase is scheduled for April 15, 2015.  

Nevada State (2)

In last week's post, we introduced the 3D learning project at Nevada State College. The pivotal question here is: “Why has Nevada State College hammered down their stakes in the field of 3D visualization?” Nevada State College is a small college, with 3400 students. Still, it leads the state of Nevada in a number of success indicators, as mentioned previously. So it should be no surprise that they hope to meet challenging fiscal times with bold counterstroke. It’s in their nature. And 3D is part of that effort, a determination to foster innovation and learning--and simply teach better.

Nevada State College leaders believe that 3D has a definite role in classroom. Dr. Andy Kuniyuki , Dean of the NSC School of Liberal Arts and Sciences believes, as a scientist, that 3D “engages, creates excitement, builds up and connects concepts, and delivers the abstract” directly to the minds of students, enabling them to “visualize the learning; to make sense of the information they are being taught.”

As a part of their initiative at Nevada State College, Dr. Kuniyuki is also laying the groundwork for research on the effectiveness of 3D in instruction. He wants to evidence some level of efficacy: “that 3D aids the conceptualization of difficult-to-deliver subject areas.” He explains that the college hopes to compare the impact of learning with 3D visualization with the baseline of past experience. “We want to see what students are able to think, know and do better or more efficiently with 3D—and then measure that outcome.”

Dr. Kuniyuki is also considering some innovative forward thinking in designing new 3D simulations to tackle some stubborn educational challenges: “Schools generally don’t do sufficient justice explaining why DNA is a hereditary molecule,” he explains. “We want to see if we can develop, model, and deliver on that essential question” using some in-house 3D visualization.

Nevada State Flies High

Nevada State College, located in Henderson (NV) is what we like to call a “high-flying” school. In educational circles, that moniker identifies a school that defies traditional expectations and succeeds despite the odds. Nevada State College is beaming proud of the fact that first generation, low income minority students comprise the bulk of their enrollment. The numbers substantiate the boast since 54.5% of NSV students receiving a degree in Biology continue on to graduate school, and a remarkable 21.4% enroll in medical school. 

Yet another reason Nevada State College is a “high-flying” institution is that it is may be the first college in the nation to adopt 3D technology across an academic discipline, not just a single classroom. Nevada State College recently purchased “The 3D Classroom,” a Sensavis program presented in life-like 3D. The 3D Classroom delivers what we have always expected and always wanted from 3D: the ability to go beyond superficial visualization. It offers the remarkable capacity to drill down, then go further down; to go inside, and then travel further inside. In short, to truly experience the long-desired “fantastic voyage” that 3D has always seemed to promise us.

Nevada State College is implementing this aggressive 3D learning initiative, starting with anatomy and physiology content, in all beginning biology classes and pre-nursing programs.  Later, they plan to expand its use in chemistry, physics, and mathematics programs.  Nevada State College administrators also plan to initiate a partnership with the content manufacturer, Sensavis, using student and faculty expertise to develop additional 3D content.