3-D Printing

In one of several committee meetings yesterday, the topic of 3-D printing was briefly discussed.  I remember reading that Staples was going to offer 3-D printing in Belgium and the Netherlands the first quarter of this year (http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/30/tech/innovation/staples-3-d-printing/).   The topic prompted me to do some preliminary research.  Amazon several books on 3-D printing. One of the books, 3-D Printing, The Next Technology Gold Rush, is available for the Kindle for $3.49.

To better visualize how 3-D printing works, I searched YouTube and found Printing a Bicycle with a 3-D Printer at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmxjLpu2BvY

The YouTube video is shared below.  Considering the cost of ink to print on paper, I can only imagine the expense of printing a 3-D object.  It will be very interesting to see the developments in 3-D printing over the next few years.  Interesting!

2013 Horizon Report Available

The 2013 Horizon Report from New Media Consortium (NMC) and Educause was just released.  You can download it from http://www.nmc.org/publications/2013-horizon-report-higher-ed . The visionary report reviews changes in technology that we can expect over the next 1-5 years.  The topics discussed are:

• 1 year or less time 
• Massively open online courses (MOOCs)  There will be a special issue of JOLT on MOOCs
• Tablet computing
• 2-3 years
• Game and gamification (application of game mechanics, such as Foursquare) based learning
• Learning analytics
• 4-5 years
• 3-D printing
• Wearable technology

The Horizon Report is always an exciting read!