Pop Up Thinglab 19 Make:Shift:Do 3D Printing

Pop Up Thinglab 19 was an inspireNshare 3D printing workshop and open session as part of the UK Craft Council Make:Shift:Do event at Croydon Library on Halloween Saturday. It was a heads on and hands on introduction to the role of libraries in the future and 3D printing with simple, friendly, accessible and cost effective "citizen tech”. It was an opportunity to learn how to get started making and printing in 3D.

The workshop started "heads on" where we covered the development of 3D printing, a simple technical explanation of how it works and the current state of 3D printing with a description of products, platforms, prices and capabilities to help you find, model and make things.

For beginners I recommended Thingiverse as a 3D printing gallery and Tinkercad as a modelling tool and when I mentioned that Tinkercad models could be downloaded to Minecraft we had quite a discussion about the connection between virtual worlds, virtual reality and 3D printing. There is deep fascination in making virtual objects real by 3D printing them and anytime I mention Minecraft it's like ringing a division bell - anyone under 16 gets quite excited and immediately engaged - there is obvious potential in teaching and learning.

At the end of the workshop we opened the doors for an open Thinglab where we printed items from the inspireNhare Thingiverse collections and talked about 3D printing in general.

Items from the inspireNshare Halloween collection printed with glow in the dark PLA

We spoke about how 3D printing is used in medicine - I told people about the first time I came across this a few years ago when surgeons saved baby's life using a 3-D printed windpipe. We went on to talk about printing biological materials and how 3D printed skin can help burn victims and avoid the use of animals in pharmaceutical and cosmetic testing testing. We spoke about how a 3D Printed Heart Replica Helped Save the Life of a Nine-Month-Old Baby and about how 3D printing is increasingly important and useful to make prosthetics.  

We spoke about how maybe one day every home might have a 3D printer and how this would affect standard business models and the effect on the environment of all the chains in transportation needed to get an object from remote centralised manufacturing (often in distant countries such a China) to you. Many people ask if 3D printing can use recycled materials and thanks to Filamentive we had a range of recycled 3D printer filament samples and some objects such as the Boneheads: Skull Box w/ Brain which I managed to print with their rPLA to show and talk about.

Boneheads: Skull Box w/ Brain printed using recycled PLA from Filamentive

We spoke about how 3D printing is especially useful in remote areas where you can't easily just go down the shop and buy something (or order it on-line for delivery) -  with a 3D printer you have your own local manufacturing facility. In space you can't take everything up with you so the ability to make objects on demand locally and to use recycled materials will be critical .. especially on missions to Mars for example. I told people about the projects to use the local materials of other planets with 3D printers e.g. NASA Tests Feasibility of 3D Printing on the Moon & Other Planets Using In-situ Materials and a Really Hot Laser.

We spoke about 3D printing food and especially chocolate and about the difference between craft and design. Craft is tangible and the time and effort is in the making whereas design is virtual and the time and effort is in the "composition" - the design can be shared, edited and remixed and the making can be automated. Using a 3D printing pen is crafting - its very much like icing - it creates a hand made one off work of art and requires manual technique and dexterity. Using 3D modelling with a 3D printer is design - its like baking from a recipe - the recipe is designed with 3D modelling tools and made using a 3D printer ... the extruder nozzles of FDM 3D printers even operate at the same temperatures as ovens and making can take a long time so the analogy with oven baking isn't that far off :)  

InspireNshare designed bookmark keytag with graphic

I spoke with a group of children who were examining the various iterations of my bookmark keytag design and had quite a conversation with them about the design process and design thinking. I explained how you can add simple graphics to a 3D design for 3D printing and explained how I had used the 3D printer to prototype and test options for the design such as overall size and thickness, flap size, the hole size and the location and the size of the "plate" area to add customised graphics. I explained that one design seemed just fine until I noticed that in actual use it left quite an impression on the page - the library wouldn't like this as it would damage their stock. I though this could be solved by making the whole bookmark thiner so 3D printed a thiner prototype to test until I arrived at a design that was just thick enough to be robust but just thin enough not to leave too much of an impression on the page.

At the end of the open session people took away 3D printed objects made on the day as well as some I had "baked" earlier from the inspireNhare Thingiverse collections and as it was Halloween Saturday there were 3D printed glow in the dark things to take away from the inspireNshare Halloween collection. 

Thank you to 
CCS Libraries for their support
The Crafts Council UK for their support
Ultimaker for the loan of an Ultimaker 2 3D printer
Filamentive for a sample selection of recycled filaments

For more images of Pop Up Thinglab 19 visit: Thinglab 19 images (Flickr album)

To find out more about inspireNshare visit http://inspireNshare.com

To find out more about inspireNshare Thinglab visit http://inspirenshare.com/thinglab

For my bookmarks on 3D printing visit https://del.icio.us/martinrichardking/fab

For the inspireNshare Thingverse collection visit 

http://www.thingiverse.com/inspirenshare/collections

Pop Up Thinglab 18 Make:Shift:Do Virtual Reality

Family DIY Virtual reality at the CCS Libraries inspireNshare Make Shift Do

Pop Up Thinglab 18 was an inspireNshare virtual reality workshop and travel agency as part of the UK Craft Council Make:Shift:Do event at Croydon Library. It was a hands on and heads on introduction to  the role of libraries in the future and virtual Reality with simple, friendly, accessible and cost effective "citizen tech”. It was an opportunity to see yourself in virtual reality and make and take away your own virtual reality viewer.

One of the wonderful things about libraries is that they welcome everyone - they have no minimal entry level requirements, testing, measurement or grading. Our workshop and hands on session in Croydon central library had all ages, abilities and backgrounds and it was wonderful to see everyone learning together.

Library Learning: all ages, abilities and backgrounds can learn together  

The workshop started "heads on" where we covered the development of virtual reality, a simple technical explanation of how it works and the current state of virtual reality with a description of products, platforms, prices and capabilities. The second part of the workshop was "hands on" where we made Google Cardboard virtual reality viewers to use with our smartphones to see virtual reality. It was a real pleasure to see children help their parents to make the DIY headsets and to describe and talk about virtual reality with them.

DIY Virtual reality ... Making virtual reality viewers 

At the end of the workshop we opened the doors for a "virtual reality travel agency" where we we took roller coaster rides, travelled the world, visited space and faced our fears with a variety of virtual reality viewers.

Going places in your local library with virtual reality

We talked about how virtual reality can be used to provide new learning and entertainment opportunities through first person perspectives. Getting into space is an expensive and difficult endeavour but virtual reality can get you there with a first person perspective relatively easily and cheaply. We spoke about virtual reality entertainment and education trips into space and how NASA use virtual reality to train astronauts especially to prepare for emergency situation and operations outside the space station. We spoke about how Tim Peak had been through virtual reality simulations of the manual docking manoeuvre with the international space station - something that had to be done on his real mission to space although one of the other astronauts carried out the manual docking on that occasion.

One of the adults was an engineer and told me how hid company used virtual reality to model engineering plant before construction and to train engineers in service and maintenance operations.

We had conversations about how the first person perspective of virtual reality can help you see and hopefully understand the world from different perspectives by "walking in someone else's shoes". We spoke about how virtual reality can develop empathy and about how the United Nations is using Virtual reality to raise awareness about vulnerable communities. We spoke about how it would be useful for decision makers to use virtual reality to understand the different perspectives before and after a decision - people thought it would be most useful for politicians in particular to have a first person perspective on the consequences of the decisions they make. Politicians were seen as being too remote and removed from the reality of everyday life and that virtual reality could help bring them closer to reality.

We spoke about how virtual reality can be used in education to bring new experiences into teaching and learning. I mentioned Donald Clark's video on how virtual reality can bring experiential learning into physics and astronomy - for example getting the sense of how physics operates in the zero gravity environment of the space station. We also talked about how new perspectives through virtual reality could give people a better understanding of certain topics - using virtual reality to take a "Fantastic Voyage" through the human body, the solar system or see chemical reactions at the molecular level first hand! 

We finished our hands on session by putting ourselves in the picture by taking and viewing virtual reality selfies - its something that always helps to bring home the reality of virtual reality.

 Family learning 360\virtual reality selfie https://goo.gl/jYWsQ3

Pop Up Thinglab 18 combined craft and technology -  Sara Brouwer from the UK Crafts Council summed it up perfectly 

Cardboard paper craft + smart phone = a brand new VR headset & world travel! Super family workshop by @inspireNshare for #CCMakeShiftDo

https://twitter.com/SaraBrouw/status/792337953045483522

Thank you to 
CCS Libraries for their support
The Crafts Council UK for their support
Ultimaker for the loan of an Ultimaker 2 3D printer
Filamentive for a sample selection of recycled filaments

For more images of Pop Up Thinglab 18 visit: Thinglab 18 images (Flickr album)

To find out more about inspireNshare visit http://inspireNshare.com

To find out more about inspireNshare Thinglab visit http://inspirenshare.com/thinglab

For my bookmarks on 3D printing visit https://del.icio.us/martinrichardking/fab

For the inspireNshare Thingiverse collection visit 

http://www.thingiverse.com/inspirenshare/collections

Learning In The Youth Zone

Pop Up Thinglab 12 Childrens DIY VR Workshop

“Technology is anything invented after you were born.” ~ Alan Kay

“Technology is everything that doesn’t work yet." ~ Danny Hillis

Although virtual reality has been around for a long time (even before I was born) it is only now starting to enter the mainstream. Most people would consider virtual reality as technology - it's new new and doesn't work that well. 

NASA is an organisation tightly connected with technology and they have been using virtual reality for a long time - here is how they explain it:

 "Virtual reality is the use of computer technology to create the effect of an interactive three-dimensional world in which the objects have a sense of spatial presence.”  

Did you understand that?

This is what Albert Einstein has to say about explanations

"If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself" 

I like to flip Einstein's idea so that

"if you want to understand it yourself have a six year old explain it to you"

This is how Croydon Library code club children explained virtual reality to me 

 "In virtual reality you can look around as if you are there"

I know which explanation I prefer. 

Children carry less baggage than adults - things are simpler, and more exciting all at the same time. Children rather than adults are better suited to accommodate new technology.

In How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Internet’ Douglas Adams wrote  ... 

"you would think we would learn the way these things work, which is this:

1) everything that’s already in the world when you’re born is just normal

2) anything that gets invented between then and before you turn thirty is incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a career out of it

3) anything that gets invented after you’re thirty is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it until it’s been around for about ten years when it gradually turns out to be alright really."

As young people we are amazing - curiosity bootstraps our learning through play, exploration and experimentation. We learn how to walk and talk before we can read an instruction manual - babies learn to walk through curiosity and trial and error exploration and experimentation. 

One of our greatest ever scientists knew all about the power of curiosity, play and experimentation.

“I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious” ~ Albert Einstein

“Play is the highest form of research”  ~ Albert Einstein

The marine biologist and explorer Sylvia Earle once said 

"The best scientists and explorers have the attributes of kids! They ask question and have a sense of wonder. They have curiosity."

Children Play Like Scientists Work - they try things out, experiment, test things, break things and inquire - just as if they are doing scientific research. Failure is not an option .... literally ...  "that didn't work ... lets try this instead" its not thought about in the adult way -its just something that happens - its all part of the fun - its an essential ingredient of play and learning.

I'm Rowing a boat .... inside the Google HQ

"Any sufficiently advanced work is indistinguishable from play" ~ Seb Paquet

We hear the stories about the workplaces and cultures of those creative and innovative companies with their beanbags, toys colourful surroundings and "move fast and break things" cultures. The relationship between playfulness and innovation is no co-incidence - try your own experiment - have a meeting in the standard corporate boardroom and then in a nursery. The corporate boardroom is designed for authority and formality ... the environment suppresses imagination .. the nursery is designed for play - it stimulates the imagination. 

When people ask me about ways to promote creativity and innovation ... I always say "start with a nursery" and its no coincidence that innovative companies have workplaces that resemble nurseries.

In "Profiles of the Future" Arthur C. Clarke warned about the the failure of imagination and set out his three Laws of prediction:

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

The only thing we can't predict is the future - its unwritten ... its uncertain.

"Play is about exploring the possible. In times of rapid change, exploring the possible becomes an essential skill. We don’t have maps for the territory of tomorrow. As a result, all citizens must become explorers of this emerging world. The best way to prepare for the emergence of the future is to learn how to be comfortable with uncertainty. To be comfortable with uncertainty, one must remain fluid, receptive and creative — in a word: playful." ~ Tina Barseghian (The Power of Play in Learning)
A Curious Mind Knows No Limits - to learn just start playing  .. its only natural - we just have to create the conditions.

“Our greatest national resource is the minds of our children.” ~ Walt Disney

The best way to learn is to teach.

Children are our future - let them teach us

Remember ...

“We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing” ~ George Bernard Shaw

inspireNshare are passionate about peer learning and specialise in facilitating mutual co-created peer learning projects through sharing. Our projects focus on "Citizen Tech" using cost effective, free, open, easy technologies and social media. With our projects everyone is both a learner and a teacher.

inspireNshare are in the Youth Zone at Mozfest 

Mozfest
Sunday October 30th - Ravensbourne College, London
MAKE:VR ... Libraries: 21st century literacies and citizen tech
See yourself in virtual reality, learn how to make your own virtual reality viewer and to make and share your own virtual reality content. 

To find out more about inspireNshare visit http://inspirenshare.com

To find out more about inspireNshare projects in education visit http://inspirenshare.com/projects-in-education

Citizen Tech

Image "Mud Kitchens: A Recipe for Fun" ~ earlyyears.co.uk

Technology is "the science of craft". The word combines the greek roots "Techne" (art, skill, ingenuity) and logia (techniques, skills, methods and processes).  Jacobe Bigelow first coined the word in in "Elements of Technology" a textbook from  a series of lectures on the application of the sciences to the useful arts" in 1829.

Citizenship is about the ability of the ordinary person to participate and play an active role in society - its about the ability of the ordinary person to do things and move from consuming to creating and sharing what they do.

"...the street finds its own uses for things" ~ William Gibson

Citizen tech is about the ability of the ordinary person to participate in technology as the science of craft. 

Citizen tech is simple, friendly accessible and cost effective - it encourages participation, play and production. 

Citizen tech is about creativity, re-mixing, invention, exploration and experimentation in the science of craft.

InspireNshare run, promote and contribute to projects in education and the community that promote the peer to peer, open and exploratory methods of citizen tech - come and see us and find out more at Make:Shift:Do and Mozfest.

Make:Shift:Do 
Saturday October 29th - Croydon Central Library
Making the library of the future
An introduction to Virtual Reality and 3D printing with simple, friendly, accessible and cost effective "citizen tech”.

Mozfest
Sunday October 30th - Ravensbourne College, London
MAKE:VR ... Libraries: 21st century literacies and citizen tech
See yourself in virtual reality, learn how to make your own virtual reality viewer and to make and share your own virtual reality content. 

Pop Up Thinglab 17: Adventures in Virtual reality

There you are ... in my virtual reality 

Pop Up Thinglab 17 was a virtual reality travel agency student welcome event at Westminster Kingsway college Soho centre.

We aimed to give students and staff a personal experience with immersive 360 degree virtual reality by putting them in the picture (literally) using our virtual reality camera. We started off talking 360 degree virtual reality selfies.

We are familiar with seeing ourselves in two dimensions on flat media such as photos and videos but seeing ourselves in virtual reality is something new - the VR selfie is the strangest selfie yet. In-situ virtual reality is strangely compelling and messes with our senses as we move from the familiar two dimensional passive voyeurism of flat media perspectives to the active immersive first person perspective of virtual reality.  The best lie is close to the truth - In-situ VR is close to reality and gets the closest I've seen yet to confusing people that what they are seeing is real - people seem spell-bound looking around, many start reaching out to touch things and many can't resist moving around.

Experiencing an in-situ VR selfie

With the virtual reality travel agency students and staff visited Borneo, Kenya and Mongolia, went ski jumping, walked a tightrope, went to the top of the spire at the world trade centre, rode roller coasters, went into outer space, went back in time to the Jurassic era, went forward in time to a cyber-punk future in Prague and New York and went on stage with the Cirque Du Soleil.

 Virtual reality can seem real

Using virtual reality with the smartphone speaker helps make it a shared social experience as the VR traveller can have conversations with people around them in the real world and involve them in what they are experiencing.

Now that I have your undivided attention

Many of the students wanted to get more immersed and used their headphones with the VR viewer - this had the effect of disconnecting them from the group around them and I noticed each part then acting and experiencing separately. The VR travellers with headphones all became quite isolated and introspective - quiet, absorbed and engrossed ... indeed they became immersed.

Seeing the absorbing effect of immersive virtual reality made wonder how it might be used in relation to attention - not just to help concentration and focus but also to help with attention shifting conditions such as ADHD and sensory overload conditions such as autism.

We had conversations with students and staff about the differences between 360 immersion and 3D viewing and immersion and used the experience of the VR selfie to understand these differences. We spoke about so called 4D of light field image capture with the Lytro Immerge "volumetric" light field virtual reality camera for example.

We had conversations about the future of virtual reality - the thought of Matrix style total immersion and the problems of VR addiction for some individuals and for wider society. 

We had conversations about practical uses of virtual reality in addition to entertainment and gaming. We talked about the use of virtual reality to provide simulations for training and education, for remote control of robots and equipment, medical uses such as the treatment of phobias. We spoke about the potential of virtual reality in design sectors such as architecture where people could get inside architects' 3D models and experience an environment before it is built - helping to shape a design and avoid the problems once a design gets into the build phase.

For more images and videos of Pop Up Thinglab 17 visit:
Thinglab 17 images (Flickr album)
Thinglab 17 videos (Youtube playlist)

To find out more about inspireNshare visit http://inspireNshare.com


To find out more about inspireNshare Thinglab visit http://inspirenshare.com/thinglab

Pop Up Thinglab 16: Making Edtech Relevant

Experiencing virtual reality at Thinglab 16

Pop Up Thinglab 16 was held in the student fresher fair at Westminster Kingsway college Victoria centre with 3D printing and virtual reality.

The education system as we know it today has been shaped by the 20th century industrial technologies which facilitate batch mass production and consumption of standardised products on scale - its a discourse that has shaped and normalised much economic and organisational thinking - including the standard education model.

The information revolution is only just getting started but is already interrupting the discourse of the industrial revolution and information technologies are disrupting models based on industrial technologies.

With contemporary information technologies in everyday life people expect fast and personalised (even personal) experiences - something which is often at odds with the experiences people have with large institutions.

Relevant and personal experience interests, motivates and engages people and Thinglab 16 started to explore how contemporary information technologies could bring relevant and personal experiences into education.

Thinglab 16 set up with two very contemporary technologies that offer incredible potential to bring relevant and personal experiences into education - 3D printing and virtual reality.

3D printing is the antithesis of industrial era mass scale standardised production .. 3D printing is ideal for small scale personal production and this was our aim with 3D printing at Thinglab 16.

Using cheap,free and easy "citizen tech" type technologies we set about demonstrating small scale personal production with a pair of Flashforge Finder 3D printers, the Thingiverse 3D design gallery and Tinkercad for simple 3D design. We started straight away - the people on the stand next to us were from the anti-smoking group "healthy heart" so we found printed a heart shaped box for them. Next up a man from Pizza Express came over and asked if we could print something for Pizza express and we printed a Pizza express tag for him. A student came over and asked if we could make a tag for the DC comic Suicide squad supervillain\anti-hero Deadshot so we quickly threw some letters together in Tinkercad and printed out a deadshot tag for him.

A 3D printed heart shaped box for the healthy heart campaign

3D printed Pizza Express tag for the man from Pizza Express

3D printed Deadshot tag for a student

We had excellent in depth conversations with students about different personal manufacturing technologies and the business opportunities with 3D printing. We talked about the pros and cons of FDM v SLA printing and additive v subtractive manufacturing. We spoke about the value of 3D design skills in the future in the gaming, virtual reality and manufacturing sectors. With business students we talked about what was needed to start their own personal manufacturing businesses and examples of what they could do.

Virtual reality is not only a "hot technology" at the moment but its also one with real transformative potential. Familiar media we find on screens and paper is "flat" and observed "voyeuristically" and passively from a second or third person perspective. Virtual reality is immersive and experienced as if you are there in the first person. 

Virtual reality - an Immersive and active first person experience 

In virtual reality you are inside the picture and putting people in the picture is what we aimed to do with virtual reality at Thinglab 16. We used the little Samsung Gear 360 VR camera to take a series of virtual reality selfies with groups of students and view them back in virtual reality with the Samsung Gear VR viewer. 

We are familiar with seeing ourselves in two dimensions on flat media such as photos and videos but seeing ourselves in virtual reality is something new - the VR selfie is the strangest selfie yet. In-situ virtual reality is strangely compelling and messes with our senses as we move from the familiar two dimensional passive voyeurism of flat media perspectives to the active immersive first person perspective of virtual reality.  The best lie is close to the truth - In-situ VR is close to reality and gets the closest I've seen yet to confusing people that what they are seeing is real - people seem spell-bound looking around, many start reaching out to touch things and many can't resist moving around.

Students see themselves in virtual reality and ask 'Can I walk into myself?' 

With virtual reality students travelled to cities around the world went to Borneo, Kenya, Mongolia, a refugee camp in Jordan, walked a tightrope, rode roller coasters, went into outer space, went back in time to the Jurassic era and went on stage with the Cirque Du Soleil.

We spoke with teachers about the potential of virtual reality in education - not only to interest, inspire and motivate students through contact with the technology but more importantly to transform learning through new forms of experience which go way beyond the type of flat simulations and gaming that people have used with technology in the past.

With 3D printing and virtual reality its not about content delivery anymore but about living an experience.

With 3D printing and virtual reality education can shift from systems thinking mass production to design thinking personal experience where we put people in the picture.


For more images and videos of Pop Up Thinglab 16 visit:
Thinglab 16 images (Flickr album)
Thinglab 16 videos (Youtube playlist)


To find out more about inspireNshare visit http://inspireNshare.com

To find out more about inspireNshare Thinglab visit http://inspirenshare.com/thinglab