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.