Panel Feted

The ISTE 3D Network’s annual panel presentation at the upcoming ISTE 2017 conference in San Antonio, Texas promises to be a jaw dropper.

At this [always] well-attended panel, Payod Panda will speak about content creation in VR and why we need more people (especially kids) to create for VR.  He will look at how VR creation can help students learn certain topics and help educators teach them. He will also highlight the Panoform tool for VR creation. Michael Fricano II from Hawaii will explore VR creation with tools like Thinglink VR and CoSpaces, with plenty of student examples to share with attendees. Joy Schwartz will explain how students not only learn to use CAD and 3d printing as tools but they also can learn to stretch their heart muscles, as she demonstrates how 3d printed prosthetics for children has changed the lives of her students, including how she modified American Girl dolls to have a matching 3d printed prosthetic.  Finally, Len Scrogan will close out the session by offering seven practical go-to resources for moving forward with VR learning experiences in your classroom.

The panel will run from 2:45-3:45 p.m. on Tuesday, June 27 in the HBGCC Hemisfair Ballroom 

New Dimensions

“Visualizing, designing and making in 3D are our future.”

-          Ed Tech Next Report

CoSN (the Consortium for School Networking) has released their latest  Ed Tech Next report “Dimensions in Learning: Visualizing, Designing, and Making in 3D.” The report focuses on the growth and potential of 3D in education.

CoSN is a leading international professional association for district technology leaders, representing over 10 million students in school districts nationwide and is a powerful and influential voice in K-12 education.

Once or twice a year, CoSN releases their well-respected Ed Tech Next report. Ed Tech Next reports are periodic publications which examine hot emerging technologies. Designed for busy professionals, these reports provide quick snapshots of rapidly changing fields, followed by succinct summaries of the issues as well as discussion questions or case studies to guide organizational thinking. CoSN’s EdTechNext reports are supported by a pantheon of companies: Amplify, BestBuy, CDW.G, Cisco, Comcast, Dell, ENA, Filewave, Google, HP, iBoss Security, iDentityAutomation, Ipswitich, itslearning, JAMF Software, Juniper Networks, Lenovo, Lightspeed Systems, McGraw Hill, Microsoft, Pearson, Presidio, Promethean, Qualcomm, SchoolDude, Sprint, and Verizon.

The report focuses on 3D in education. (In bringing full disclosure to the table, I am one of the two co-authors of this report. The other author is Chad Norman, who serves as the K-12 Highly Capable Program Director for the Mount Vernon School District in Washington state.)

The report, as the title indicates, focuses on the three “learning families” of 3D in education: designing in 3D, visualizing in 3D, and making in 3D. Each of these components is supported in some measure by the projector, large display, and mobile display technology industry.

The report suggests that 3D technologies sit at the bedrock of the coming digital learning revolution:

[The same] struggles and achieve­ments mark the progress of civiliza­tion. People observe, conceptualize and understand, laboring to think, plan, design and solve and struggling to fix, build, tear down, retool, reinvent—and do it all again. The digital revolution has not lessened our ingrained desire to understand, interact with and challenge the immersive world. In fact, these age-old strivings continue as we use new digital environments to visualize, design and construct our way through life, learning and work. Enter 3D technologies. 3D—origi­nally a trademark of the artisan’s stall, the architect’s bench, the gamer’s con­sole, the blockbuster cinema or the engineer’s display—is rapidly moving to the newest sandbox for learning, hashtag, the digital classroom.

The report claims that 3D merits consideration for its educational value proposition, not its “wow” factor. “In other words, what matters is the potential for improved learning with 3D technologies, not merely the pizzazz of 3D visualization, design or printed objects.” The report then goes on to cite recent research indicating the benefits of 3D technologies for visualizing, designing and making; numerous industry players in the world of 3D in education; and a rich list of available resources and references.

To obtain more information about this report, or to explore CoSN membership, see http://www.cosn.org/ed-tech-next-reports

The 3D-printed Dancer

Here's a delightful video my wife introduced to me, a video with a 3D theme. Enjoy!

3D in Higher Ed (2)

There is a "story behind the story" related to last week's post about 3D education in a higher education setting:

In China, Radio and Television Universities (RTVUs) are open higher education institutions that conduct distance education using interactive multimedia courseware, online courses, and satellite-based distance learning. These RTVUs were created to improve the quality of the work force, adjusting to a large number of learners, particularly in support of non-degree education. To that end, RTVUs operates educational programs for community education centers, municipalities, counties, business and industry needs, rural areas, remote areas, and regions inhabited by ethnic minority groups. Their advantages include lower costs and quicker graduation schemes.

We see a similar trend in U.S. colleges and universities. The trend is described in a recent book by Richard DeMillo, From Abelard to Apple. The theme of DeMillo’s books is that “any college or university can change course if it defines a compelling value proposition (one not based in "institutional envy" of Harvard and Berkeley) and imagines an institution that delivers it.” 

There’s the rub. Smaller and less influential institutions, like these Chinese RTVUs, now seek to accommodate large numbers of new learners in quick and cost effective ways, at the same time competing for students with more well-known and well-endowed universities. One way such second-tier schools are competing is through providing cutting edge visualization tools. (See my recent article, Nevada State College Flies High with 3D.) In both the Nevada State example and the Chinese Jiayuguan Branch RTVU, 3D visualization becomes much more than a sexy technology acquisition—it becomes a value proposition for the school. A draw for students. A competitive edge. A necessity. What are the implications in this story? Some of the most promising--and most likely--pacesetters for display technologies are smaller colleges, universities, and technical schools.

3D P Resources

Many folks are interested in the physical production aspects of 3D these days, namely 3D printing. If you are interested in learning more about 3D printing specifically for the classroom setting, here are my recommendations for the best books on the market, a good place to get started:

Invent to Learn

Guide to 3D Printing in the Classroom

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.

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.  

The 3D Network

The ISTE 2014 educational conference, with over 16,000 educators and thousands more vendors in attendance, was remarkable. In this post, let’s zoom in on the activity that occurred with the ISTE 3D Network during this conference.

3D Network Activities

The ISTE 3D network is a special interest group (or personal learning network) of educators within ISTE who are interested in the promise of 3D in K-20 learning. At the ISTE 2014 conference, the burgeoning 3D Network grew its membership to more than 1,800 focused educators. It’s nothing less than a new grassroots force in education. 

The ISTE 3D Network itself hosted two well-attended events:

The ISTE PLN Open House: 3D Network Table. The table was swarmed by literally hundreds of interested educators, most of whom knew very little about 3D in general and many of whom joined the network on the spot. 

The 3D Network “Gathering.” The annual face-to-face meeting of the 3D network was well attended by both educators and vendors. It was a high energy event, bringing in new leadership and many new members. Many powerful 3D technologies were also demonstrated, including auto-stereoscopic tablets, 3D scanning, a small student-built 3D printer, 3D classroom lessons, and student-designed stereo 3D projects. Free copies of Presente3D’s PowerPoint add-on were awarded to all attendees.

*****

Overall, the ISTE 2014 educational conference was a memorable event in the steady upwards trajectory of 3D in education.

3D@ISTE 2013 (2)

Of course, not all 3D at ISTE (see last week’s post), was in the exhibit hall. There were four sessions dedicated to 3D in the conference proceedings. 

The first was an open house booth for SIG3D, the newly formed ISTE special interest group dedicated to all things 3D. I was there helping out, and it was slammed with interested educators. 

The second session was a poster session offered by SIG3D president, Nancye Blair-Black. This session was also well attended and buzzing with activity. Nancye does that to folks! 

The third session involved the initial kick-off meeting of the new SIG3D. I will write more about this event later, but it was well attended. 

The last session was a poster session dedicated to 3D printing. It was not well attended, but that made perfect sense. There were zero 3D printing companies exhibiting at this conference. ISTE is not the strongest conference for 3D printing aficionados—that’s the hallmark of technology education conferences. For an explanation, see my recent Future-Talk 3D posts (3D in Tech Ed 1 and 3D in Tech Ed 2) explaining the difference between the “technology education” and the “educational technology” marketplace.

No doubt one of the best years ever.