I had heard of Neil Gershenfeld’s work on the Bits to Atoms Project at MIT but thought of these Fabrication Labs as being too expensive ($500,000+) or esoteric for everyday or classroom use.

But one fine day I got an email from Glen Bull from Virginia informing me of cheaper alternatives. These are computer-controlled die cutting machine that shapes paper, cardboard, and vinyl can be purchased for the same price as an ink-jet printer – that is, for less than $500. The advent of personal fabrication systems makes it possible for schools to begin exploring educational implications of the digital fabrication revolution today.

Leigh Wolf has set up a Ning group called fablabs and we just finished a meeting at SITE about these technoloies. Visit the group to see what one can do with these technologies.

The challenge of course is figuring how this technology can become an educational technology!

A few randomly selected blog posts…

Postdictable, the commercials

I had written earlier about the idea of "postdictable" which was defined as something that is "surprising initially, but then understandable with a bit of thought." It lies at the spot between predictability and total chaos. The movie Sixth Sense is postdictable in...

SITE2022: San Diego

SITE2022: San Diego

I sent the past week in San Diego at the SITE 2022 conference—first face to face conference in over 2.5 years. It was great to get out meet old friends, make new ones, and just spend time together. Below are (for the record) the papers and presentations that I was...

Cost of living

Being alive costs taxpayers trillions of dollars a year First time research reveals staggering annual taxpayer cost for being alive East Lansing, MI, April 15: In first-ever research, a new report quantifies a minimum 3 trillion annual taxpayer cost from citizens...

Complicating the idea of Design Thinking (in Education)

Complicating the idea of Design Thinking (in Education)

“Design thinking” is one of the latest buzzwords in education. Proponents argue that design thinking is a tried and tested process for fostering innovation in education while critics suggest that it is the latest fad to sweep through, and will, like others before it,...

CEP917 receives AT&T award, update

I had written before, CEP917: Knowledge Media Design, a course taught by Dr. Danah Henriksen and myself, in the Fall semester of 2012, received First Place (in the Blended Course category) in the2013 MSU-AT&T Instructional Technology Awards Competition. The awards...

Best practice v.s. PGP

I was recently in a discussion with members of the AACTE committee on Innovation and Technology about the term "best practice." This search for best practice (or practices) is something one hears about all the time in educational (and ed tech) circles. We want to list...

TPACK videos: A few new ones

I have come across some new TPACK related videos/podcasts (either on youtube or elsewhere) that I feel may be worth sharing. The first of them came as an email from Matt Townsley. He pointed me to these two videos by Janet Bowers of San Diego State University. In...

When is a picture of a sandwich more than a sandwich?

The answer is that when that picture has been taken by someone you know and it ends up on the NYTimes Freakonomics blog! Long story short, a picture of a sandwich taken by Leigh Wolf has been used by the cool people over at Freakonomics to illustrate a story. Check it...

Summer travel 2008 photographs

I have been taking photographs as I travel around Asia (what I have previously described as my multi-national TPACK tour) and uploading them onto Flickr as and when I can. Go to the photographs

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