Local technology company TechTol Imaging has been busy expanding its online collection of 3-D educational images in preparation for the upcoming school year.

The free database, available at 3DTOAD.com, features images in 16 categories, including dissections, skeletons, geology, molecules and more. About half the images are also viewable with anaglyph (red and blue) 3-D glasses.

The name 3DTOAD.com is an anagram for TechTol’s Online Academic Database.

The collection is unique, said Zak Ward, vice president of visual applications at TechTol.

“You can scour the Internet and you won’t find an education website like this anywhere in the world,” Ward said. “You’ll get a couple college libraries, but you have to enter a password and you can’t get on it. We’ve really started to develop a centralized location for these images.”

The site has been accessed by users in the United States, India, Japan, Great Britain and Germany, Ward said.

“It’s exciting,” Ward said. “I believe if we get a lot of people using this and keep getting the appropriate feedback to make it better, this could literally help a lot of schools across the globe.”

Items have been donated from Owens Community College, the University of Toledo, Fossil Park in Sylvania and Reverend Guitars in Detroit. The images are captured using a circular studio with 16 cameras shooting simultaneously.

TechTol, located at the Toledo campus of Owens Community College, also recently partnered with the Wood County Historical Society.

Chris Adams works at the computer, making a 3D image of Dyne Hoenie at TechTol.

“They’ve got so much stuff, from the Civil War to old farm machinery to old tools to arrowheads and Indian stuff,” Ward said. “Within the next week or so, we’ll be starting to tap into an amazing array of historical items.”

Randy Brown, curator of the Wood County Historical Museum, said TechTol’s 3-D images will be useful for community presentations as well as giving people outside of the area access to the museum’s collection.

“I think we’ll be able to get a lot of good use out of it,” Brown said.

Ward sees the site as an asset for any school struggling with its budget.

“Here’s a free solution a teacher can pull up with a projector and point things out to students. It’s literally putting all these things at a teacher’s fingertips. And that same free tool teachers can use in the classroom, the student can go home and still use,” Ward said. “That’s the best part about this, in my personal opinion, is that students can take this home and can extend that learning to show their family what they’re doing and hopefully that will spark a little bit more learning.”

The company is hoping teachers check out the site and let TechTol know what they think.

“What are some things you’d like to see on here or what things would be useful?” said Ward, who graduated from Perrysburg High School. “We’re encouraging that feedback so we can make this product better for everybody.”

Ward and TechTol CEO Phil Cox recently hired three employees to help with the workload. In the future, the company, which is seeking corporate sponsors, plans to offer a platform for smartphones and iPads as well as interactive lessons. This fall, TechTol Imaging will be awarded the Entrepreneurial & Business Excellence Hall of Fame’s Startup Innovation Award.

“We’ve got so much more stuff to put up,” Ward said. “We didn’t know what direction we were going to take at first. We didn’t know how it would be received. But people were like, ‘Wow, I wish I had had this is college.’ Reactions like that have given us encouragement to make it the way it is today. We hope we can make it even better as we incorporate a lot of the great ideas we get into the site. We are literally building this for the people.”

For more information, visit www.3DTOAD.com.

Tags: 3DTOAD, Phil Cox, TolTech, Zak Ward

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 9th, 2011 at 4:50 pm and is filed under Technology, Toledo Business Link.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Local technology company TechTol Imaging is developing a free educational website with 3-D images.

“We’re taking teaching aids in a classroom and imaging them so they’re available for any student in any school at anytime with an internet connection,” said Zak Ward, vice president of visual operations at TechTol Imaging. “They are able to study stuff at home they wouldn’t be able to take out of a classroom.”

The website 3DTOAD.com features 3-D images in categories such as anatomy dissections, computer networking, dental hygiene, geology, skeletons and yoga. The name 3DTOAD.com comes from an anagram meaning TechTol’s Online Academic Database.

TechTol is succeeding under a system the company claims is the “first — and only — in the world that instantly captures and then creates 3-D rotational images for use with any computer-based system.” The system is faster and more cost-effective than any other, with the ability to upload an object in the studio as a 3-D image in under a minute. This is achieved using a circular studio with 16 cameras shooting simultaneously.

For the short term, the main objective of 3DTOAD.com is to continue adding images to the website to build a foundation.

CEO Phil Cox, left, and VP of visual operations Zak Ward of TechTol Imaging, the company developing the 3DTOAD website.

“Once it gets big enough, we can divide it by different education levels, but we have to have enough stuff to justify that,” Ward said. “This is an ongoing development. We’re adding a whole bunch of stuff and trying to get input from teachers.”

Along with input, the company is also looking for objects to image for the website.

“We have a couple different fossil collectors in town donating their items to be imaged,” Ward said. “If someone had a butterfly collection, that’s something we’d like to hook up with. A person who is home-schooled will never see a butterfly collection except for 2-D images in a book. With this technology, they can explore.”

While it is still in development, the website is available now. Ward said TechTol plans to have a soft launch in the summer and hopes to be fully operational by the next school year.

“This can be used anywhere in the world,” Ward said. “It’s wide open. I would love to see it be successful enough to be a national or international website.”

The company is located at the Toledo campus of Owens Community College, but it is in discussions with Bowling Green State University and is looking to get involved with other institutions.

The website is not just for universities. Ward sees it as an asset for any school struggling with its budget.

“There’s so much negativity when you talk about education,” Ward said. “Here is a unique thing with a local company using their technology to hopefully better education, not to mention it’s free. This has the potential to revolutionize interactive education and distance education.”

TechTol is designing a mobile application for the website and is creating interactive lessons using the technology.

“For K-12 schools, this could be a real asset to their budget,” Brenda Leady said. “I’d hope they’d have some basic models and materials.  Then this program would add to the depth and breadth of what the students use.”

Leady is a lab coordinator for biological sciences at the University of Toledo and sees potential for the technology at the college level. However, she knows there is no replacement for hands-on experience.

“This could provide a great supplement to a traditional lab,” Leady said. “However, labs are about touching, feeling, smelling and seeing the actual objects,” she said. “A completely online experience can’t provide that. As an example, a plastic bone replica and a human bone can look exactly alike, but as soon as you touch it you feel the immediate difference.”

Ward agrees with Leady’s assessment, but he still sees the website as a valuable asset.

“In a classroom, when someone passes around a fossil you get the ability to touch it and make more of an emotional connection,” Ward said. “In a school system that does not have a budget for geology or other programs, this is the next best thing.”

The website offers an added dimension with the option of viewing a 3-D anaglyph version of every image using the standard red and blue 3-D glasses.

“We’ve tested it in the classroom,” Ward said. “The parts pop out of the screen. It’s a great way to keep kids interested and see things differently.”

Ward said the website offers benefits to education in what he calls the before, during and after stages.

“Before, you can prepare students with a preview of subjects coming up for discussion,” he said. “During, you can ask questions in class and have students interact with the images. After, you have the ability to open discussion with your family and show them what you did in school with things you normally wouldn’t be able to take home. Hopefully the learning process gets extended to home.

Tags: 3DTOAD, TechTol Imaging, Zak Ward

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 14th, 2011 at 9:34 am and is filed under Entrepreneurs, Featured, Technology, Toledo Business Link.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.