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The Future is Here and There

Posted Jul 20 2010 by kjellwr4 in Digital Fabrication, Math with 0 Comments

I am going to be leading a workshop at The Lovett School in a few weeks, and the topic of the two-day intensive with middle school math teachers is digital fabrication. For readers unfamiliar with the topic du jour, digital fabrication is the process of creating a digital design that is then produced or manufactured in physical form. The Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia is currently examining the ways that digital fabrication might enhance and refine existing curricula as well as pre-service education for elementary teachers.

This post is about how various professionals are using digital fabrication techniques to extend, enhance, and redefine their respective fields.* The sections that follow highlight real life examples of crazy ways that people are using the process to do something different- and making breakthroughs. These examples don’t necessarily shed light on the educational implications of digital fabrication; just what is possible in the most far reaching possibilities, many years away for the target audience (upper elementary and middle school students). At the same time, I wonder if the groundwork established by teachers at Lovett, Crozet, and Punahou aren’t the foundation for future architects, doctors, and filmmakers.

Aside: Most of the examples involve some variation of 3D printing, a component of digital fabrication that relates to the production of physical objects. 3D printing involves machines similar to conventional printers that precisely apply materials other than ink. Think of squeezing frosting through a tube onto a cake in an additive manner that builds the depth and volume of an object and you have a very rough idea of 3D printing. The difference between this metaphor and actual 3D printing is that 3D printing involves the use of computers that add both precision and control to the process. Still confused? Here is a video of me creating a miniature version of UVA’s Rotunda on elementary-appropriate software that is then fabricated using a 3D printer (see 2:48 of the video).

Cinema: Film & Video Game Prototypes

It’s a bit hard to believe that the creators of such hit titles as Ironman 2 and Halo 3 really need physical models. After all, the final medium is entirely 2D (for the most part). Yet, making and creating models is an important facet of the visual reality of video games and movies.

Automobile: Rims, Intake Valves & Other Customizations

Steeda Autosports creates Ford accessories of all types. Regardless of whether it is a “blinging” rim or a new set of shocks and springs, Steeda uses digital fabrication to create quick models (also known as rapid prototyping) that appeal to their clients’ wants and needs.

Read more at 3D printing revs up Steeda Autosports’ R&D.

Architecture: Concrete Printing

Making scale models and printed diagrams have always been a part of the “architect’s handbook.” Both contextual and illustrative, architects often use models and diagrams to convey thoughts and ideas. However, what happens when the architect is able to create with cutting edge processes?

National Security: Surveillance

I wonder how digitally fabricating insect wings and flying objects like those in the video that follows might further my safety. And my love of remote controlled objects.

Medicine: Building Organs

Much of this is Greek to me, but I kind of see it… If you can 3D print the building blocks of an organ, where can you go?

Read more at Building body parts with 3D printing.

*I am of two minds about workforce development topics as it pertains to education. Despite my conflicting thoughts, I thought that it might be helpful for the attendees to understand how various fields are using digital fabrication in the workplace. I feel like this post needs this caveat because it might appear that workforce rationales are the primary justifications for engaging in age/context-appropriate forms of digital fabrication. There are more reasons that pertain to engineering, mathematics, and 21st Century Skills, but I am not going to get into it within this post.

Digital Fabrication: M-Cubed

Posted Jul 12 2010 by kjellwr4 in Digital Fabrication with 0 Comments

Mitchell Jetten is one of the youngest and most successful shop owners on Shapeways, an open web market for personally designed products. At age 19, Mitchell offers products that build upon his passion: model trains and railroad accessories. His most successful design is a train that is common to the Netherlands, a VIRM 9500 series, and the popularity of his designs earned him nearly $4000 since his SpoorObjecten Shop opened on Shapeways.

Mitchell engages in a process known as digital fabrication when producing his model trains and accessories. Digital fabrication, in its simplest form, involves the creation of a digital design that is then produced in physical form by using specialized hardware. Mitchell uses software that is a mixture of commercial and open source 3D CAD software that resembles Google Sketchup in order to create his railroad accessories. He relies on hardware like 3D printers and CNC machines to translate this digital artifact into something that is physical and tangible. The hardware is not located in a nearby space for Mitchell; he uses Shapeways equipment and web infrastructure to produce, manufacture, market, and sell the designs that he creates.

Although digitally fabricating objects might seem outlandish and inconceivable, millions of people engage in the process on a daily basis. Just look at the mundane and commonplace use of Microsoft Word and the ubiquitous printer. Countless businesspeople, professionals, teachers, and students use this word processing software to type words on a computer. With a connected printer, individuals turn the “bits” of typed text into something that appears on paper, a tangible reflection that can be held, dispersed, and passed along. The big difference between Mitchell and the everyday printing process is that Mitchell is fabricating 3D objects that have depth, volume, form, and a consistency that is more than just paper.

Regardless of one’s awareness of the term or the production of 3D objects, digitally fabricating physical objects is not a new concept. In 2006, Neil Gershenfeld, director of MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms, gave international communities $20,000 worth of fabrication software and equipment so that local farmers and village people could solved problems that market and technical resources failed to address. The primary users weren’t engineers or scientists but individuals with a high degree of curiosity, motivation, and tenaciousness. What was created was remarkable: laypeople developed instrumentation for agriculture production in the country of Ghana and citizens in remote villages in India made steam turbines. Gershenfeld noted that when people were given the power to create rather than consume information, there was a high degree of empowerment, problem solving, and invention. For additional information, check out Gershenfeld’s book, Fab.

In the spring of 2010, the MacArthur Foundation and HASTAC gave the Fab@School proposal an endorsement by recognizing it with a Digital Media and Learning award. Building on the work of Gershenfeld, the Fab@School proposal aims to connect the digital fabrication process, including easy-to-use software and affordable hardware, to existing K-12 curricular mandates in a manner that engages future Mitchell Jettens to look closely at the science, engineering, and mathematics of futuristic creation. And, unlike other fabrication initiatives, Fab@School’s primary focus is on elementary teachers and students, not high school.

Fab@School is about learning, engagement, and creativity at its core, not about the software and equipment. Although important to the success and opportunities in digital fabrication at the K-12 level, the mechanisms for producing physical objects are a means to an end despite the “whiz-bang” futurism of 3D printers and 2D die-cut machines. The proposal’s “meat” is the curriculum that provides alternative ways to address existing standards through creation and design in a manner befitting Seymour Papert’s constructionist philosophy: Learning occurs when there is a reconstruction of knowledge through the making of physical objects.

At the end of June, Fab@School investigators tested prototype lessons with middle school students in Albemarle County Public Schools. The students were all participants in a pilot program called M-Cubed, an initiative focused on helping African American middle school boys with algebra readiness. Although not truly project-based learning experiences, the lessons prompted discussion and exploration of algebraic concepts, variables, geometry, volume, and surface area. Sample lessons can be found at the digital fabrication website.

As the unofficial photographer for this experience, I thought that I would share some pictures from M-Cubed 2010. I am also including a video that was created by Daniel Tillman, a colleague who works on the Fab@School project with me. The video was shot after students had only an hour of instructional directions- this shows the ease of the fabrication process.

What’s in a Word?

Posted Jul 11 2010 by kjellwr4 in 21st Century with 1 Comment

Silvia Tolisano, author and blogger at Langwitches, recently wrote a post entitled 21st Century Skills-Literacies-Fluencies. The real meat of the post IMHO is her coach analogy through which she describes a metaphor for thinking about technology support and teacher practice as it applies to instructional technology:

Coaches are working with athletes…but… they can’t PLAY FOR the athletes. The coaches’ job is to prepare them, to teach them the rules of the game and to have a plan to condition the athletes to be at their physical best when it is time to play or compete. Teachers need to see us as their coaches. We can show them tools that will help them teach 21st Century skills. We can introduce them to projects, resources, hardware, software and materials that will support 21st Century literacies…but ultimately educators will have to go out on the field and “play”. We can coach them, but ultimately they will have to do the work to become “fit” for themselves.

Her thoughtful ideas extend to 21st Century literacies and fluencies. Yet, despite her clear examples, I am fixated on her introduction. Sylvia begins by half-apologizing for using the phrase “21st Century Skills” and words like collaboration, creativity, and communication. Her reason: Some edubloggers and educators feel that the 21st Century Skills movement, espoused by Tony Wagner and The Partnership for 21st Century Skills, is becoming a cliche that is batted around willy-nilly in modern reform of schools. It is losing its meaning, a meaning and skill list that some believe has been around for some time.

Sylvia, don’t couch your thoughts!

One of the primary attacks against 21st Century Skills is the contention that the skills aren’t really knew. Some contend that skills like creativity, collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and connectivity are holdovers from prior decades. Tim Stahmer, a blogger at Assorted Stuff, succinctly summarizes this line of thought by saying:

As we enter the second decade of the century, this is a cliche that has lost whatever meaning it might have had. Mostly it’s used by politicians and education experts as a catch-all for whatever concept they’re currently pushing.

The skills most often included – creativity, critical thinking, communication, etc. – are nothing unique to this century.

And they are, for the most part, the diametrical opposite of the test-driven crap that has been passed off as education reform during the past decade.

In a way, Tim is absolutely correct by saying that these skills are not unique to this century. Superficially, I doubt many would be convinced that it was unimportant for students to be creative or (fill-in-the-blank with a 21st Century Skill) in the 90s, 80s, or 70s. If you look at the skills in isolation, I am certain bygone teachers would say, “Yeah, all of those were emphasized to a certain degree during my era.”

What is different is the context in which the phrase 21st Century Skills and all of the skills and literacies appear. According to Tony Wagner, author of The Global Achievement Gap, work and life in the modern world is vastly different then in decades past- and schools aren’t changing.

…I have come to understand that there is a core set of survival skills for today’s workplace, as well as for lifelong learning and active citizenship- skills that are neither taught nor tested even in our best school systems. Young people who want to earn more than minimum wage and who go out into the world without the new survival skills I’ve uncovered in my research are crippled for life; they are similarly unprepared to be active and informed citizens or to be adults who will continue to be stimulated by new information and ideas. Parents and educators who do not attend to these skills are putting their children at an increased risk of not being able to get and keep a good job, grow as learners, or make positive contributions to their community. I believe that opinion leaders and policy-makers who do not understand the profound implications of teaching and testing these new survival skills are complicit in an unwitting conspiracy to put our nation at even greater risk of losing our competitive advantage. Unfortunately, the bet that No Child Left Behind will save us is a losing one (p. 14).

The emphasis and need to attend to 21st Century Skills (or Survival Skills as Wagner calls them) is ever more important now because the world is quite different. The context imbues the words and phrases that Tim believes are now trite cliches with enhanced meaning and urgency, a semantic flavoring that is unseen when examining phonetic words on a printed or digital page in isolation. Yes, creativity-collaboration-problem solving-communication-critical thinking were important before, but the shifting landscape of work and life in this era adds a level of imperative gravity to the skills.

When I hear someone write or say “21st Century Skills,” I immediately think of the invisible backstory described by Wagner and Thomas Friedman- a sociological description of what it now means to be a successful student, worker, and citizen in this day and age. This backstory that appears in my mind was impossible when I first began teaching, not because I wasn’t well read or uninformed, but because the world was beginning a metamorphosis that is still happening. A change that requires critical thinking, analysis, collaboration, and communication- all of which were nice in the 80s and 90s but not crucial. There is definitely an enhanced meaning in these words and phrases for me now, much like saying “fire” in a burning building differs from saying the same word with people holding guns.

We need to talk about 21st Century Skills, not encourage people to “stop saying that” because some overuse or decontextualize the concept. Write on, Sylvia!

Digital Fabrication at ISTE 2010

Posted Jun 17 2010 by kjellwr4 in Digital Fabrication with 0 Comments

For the past eight months, I have worked with a number of elementary and middle school teachers on the interdisciplinary opportunities found within digitally fabricating objects.  Digital fabrication, for those unfamiliar with this unique process, involves creating a digital design that is then produced in a physical form.  With ISTE 2010 in a few short weeks, I thought it appropriate to share sessions and opportunities to learn more about digital fabrication during the Denver conference.

1. Personal Fabrication Systems in the Classroom: Lessons, Examples, and Learning

  • Tuesday, 6/29/2010, 10:00am–12:00pm, CCC Lobby A, Table: P19
  • Description: Explore ways in which elementary and secondary teachers are using personal fabrication systems to create three-dimensional objects and support STEM learning in their classrooms.
  • In addition to seeing my shining face, this poster session will feature Celine, a fifth grade student from Crozet Elementary School.  Celine will be fabricating personal designs with the software and hardware that was used in her school this past year.  You can read more about Celine and her interests on her wiki.
  • Representatives from Aspex Software, Fablevision, Software MacKiev, and Graphtec America will be present to answer questions.

2. The FabLab Classroom: A Digital Fabrication Laboratory for Schools

  • Tuesday, 6/29/2010, 2:00pm–3:00pm, CCC 205/207
  • Description: The FabLab Classroom empowers students to invent simple machines and other usable products. Learn about digital fabrication in math, science, and language arts.
  • This formal session features my adviser, Glen Bull, as well as Arlene Borthwick, Mike Charles, Sarah McPherson, Nick Sanham, Peggy Healy Stearns and Paula White.

3. Exhibit Hall: Canon USA, Inc.

  • Location: Booth 1924 (floorplan)
  • Experiment and play with digital fabrication equipment at the Canon booth!

4. Exhibit Hall: Software MacKiev

  • Location: Booth 840 (floorplan)
  • Peggy Healy Sterns, creator of popular software titles like The Graph Club and Stationary Studio, will be demoing a new piece of digital fabrication software that she is developing with Software MacKiev.  I will also be there as time permits.

Infowhelm

Posted Jun 13 2010 by kjellwr4 in 21st Century with 0 Comments

Researching Milkshakes

Posted Jun 11 2010 by kjellwr4 in Research with 1 Comment

I earmarked this passage as one to throw out when the edubloggers triumphantly danced upon higher education and its focus on methodology and testing.  Upon reflection, I think that it could go both ways.  (Thanks for the provocative book, LD.  You can see where my mind is at!)

When McDonald’s wanted to improve sales of its milkshakes, it hired researchers to figure out what characteristics its customers cared about.  Should the shakes be thicker?  Sweeter?  Colder?  Almost all of the researchers focused on the product.  But one of them, Gerald Berstall, chose to ignore the shakes themselves and study the customers instead.  He sat in a McDonald’s for eighteen hours one day, observing who bought milkshakes and at what time.  One surprising discovery was that many milkshakes were purchased early in the day- odd, as consuming a shake at eight A.M. plainly doesn’t fit the bacon-and-eggs model of breakfast.  Berstall also garnered three other behavioral clues from the milkshake crowd: the buyers were always alone, they rarely brought anything besides a shake, and they nver consumed the shakes in the store.

The breakfast-shake drinkers were clearly commuters, intending to drink them while driving to work.  This behavior was readily apparent, but the other researchers had missed it because it didn’t fit the normal way of thinking about either milkshakes or breakfast.  Berstall and his colleagues noted in Finding the “Right Job for Your Product,” their essay in the Harvard Business Review, the key to understanding what was going on was to stop viewing the product in isolation and to give up traditional notions of the morning meal.  Berstall instead focused on a single, simple question: “What job is a customer hiring that milkshake to do at eight A.M.?”

If you want to eat while you are driving, you need something you can eat with one hand.  It shouldn’t be to hot, too messy, or too greasy.  It should also be moderately tasty, and take a while to finish.  Not one conventional breakfast item fits that bill, and so without regard for the sacred traditions of the morning meal, those customers were hiring the milkshake to do the job they needed done.

All the researchers except Berstell missed this fact, because they made two kinds of mistakes, things we might call “milkshake mistakes.”  The first was to concentrate mainly on the product and assume that everything important about it was somehow implicit in its attributes, without regard to what role the customers wanted it to play- the job they were hiring the milkshake for.

The second mistake was to adopt a narrow view of the type of food people have always eaten in the morning, as if all habits were deeply rooted traditions instead of accumulated accidents.  Neither the shake itself nor the history of breakfast mattered as much as customers needing food to do a nontraditional job- serve as sustenance and amusement for their morning commute- for which they hired the milkshake (p. 12-14).

Metaphors abound in this passage, one that I really like.  For me, these paragraphs are less about media, TV, the Internet, etc… and more about two divides (insert groups here).  Yup, I see higher education research vs connected learners, but I also see other seemingly opposing groups as well.

Quote From:

Shirky, C. (2010). Cognitive surplus: Creativity and generosity in a connected age. New York, NY: The Penguin Press.

The Key to Gold in Them There Hills: Laggards?

Posted Jun 8 2010 by kjellwr4 in Professional Development with 0 Comments

I admit that I made it to page 436 in Everett Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovations before I said, “No more.”  The book chronicles nearly 50 years of innovation research, and it contains the studies and references to back it up (58 pages of research articles, books, reports, and studies).  It is an extremely readable book, but I hit an impervious wall at the end of chapter 10.  I think that the wall was the impending summer, and now I find myself scouring my dog-eared pages and random highlighting for quotes.  Kind of ironic.

I returned to Rogers’ book after reading Clive Thompson’s recent article in Wired magazine.  Using the research of Jacob Goldenberg, he writes that companies should focus on marketing to laggards in order to generate increased sales of new high tech products.  Often overlooked, laggards are a segment of the population who typically are the last people in a social system to adopt a new innovation.  Thompson and Goldberg’s contention is that innovators and early adopters, people who quickly buy products like the iPad, need very little marketing attention.

If Goldenberg is right, marketers have made a colossal error by snubbing laggards. Instead, they ought to be frantically figuring out how to market to them. After all, early adopters don’t need much convincing. But if you can figure out how to tip just 1 percent of laggards into the “buy” category, the upside is huge. What’s more, Goldenberg thinks word-of-mouth recommendations from laggards are supremely persuasive: If John can handle that new gizmo, anyone can, right?

I hesitate to say that this argument is wrong.  After all, it makes sense- get the laggards on board and there is another source of revenue.  Very true.  However, laggards aren’t the efficient choice for marketing dollars according to Rogers’ extensive research:

Laggards are the last in a social system to adopt an innovation.  They possess almost no opinion leadership.  Laggards are the most localite of all adopter categories in their outlook.  Many are near isolates in the social networks of their system.  The point of reference for the laggard is the past.  Decisions are often made in terms of what has been done previously, and these individuals interact primarily with others who also have relatively traditional values.  Laggards tend to be suspicious of innovations and of change agents (Rogers, 2003, p. 284).

I am neither an innovation scholar nor have I read Goldenberg’s research.  However, I tend to rely more on the big names when it comes to content areas that I have little background, and Everett Rogers is a well-known scholar in the areas that Thompson and Goldenberg discuss.  Rogers’ basic description of laggards calls into question the choice to deliberately spend marketing dollars on this population segment.  However, he would agree with Thompson and Goldenberg on one account: Don’t focus on the innovators (the people who will buy an innovation regardless) because they, like the laggards, tend to operate within a closed social circle of similarly-minded people.

What is a better marketing choice?  Focus on opinion leaders.

Opinion leaders are individuals who lead in influencing others’ opinions.  The behavior of opinion leaders is important in determining the rate of adoption of an innovation in a system.  In fact, the diffusion curve is S-shaped because once opinion leaders adopt and begin telling others about an innovation, the number of adopters per unit of time takes off in an exponential curve (p. 300).

The most striking characteristic of opinion leaders is their unique and influential position in their system’s communication structure: they are at the center of interpersonal communication networks.  A communication network consists of interconnected individuals who are linked by patterned flows of information.  An opinion leader’s interpersonal networks allow him or her to serve as a social model whose innovative behavior is imitated by many other members of the system.  The respect with which the opinion leader is held can be lost, however, if an opinion leader deviates too far from the norms of the system (p. 27).

It is an over-simplification to say that gaining the opinion leaders’ vote equates to innovation adoption and increased sales.  There are many other factors that influence the diffusion of a new product into a social system including the relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability, and observability.  That being said, in this period of belt-tightening economic decisions, would it make more sense to target marketing to the laggards or the opinion leaders?  Sure, if there is unlimited money, go after the laggards.  Yet, the potential for opinion leaders to push along the early and late majority populations in innovation adoption seems like a much wiser route.

As an aside I think that school administrators and leaders would do well to look at Rogers’ research. I think that much of what he writes about is applicable to professional development and school change.

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