The STO Café Strong Technology Education Twente took place on 25 October at software company MetaChef, perhaps one of the most innovative companies in Twente. MetaChef, together with Het Foodatelier and DiDutch, is part of the Digital Food Factory in Enschede. This STO Café was primarily dedicated to getting acquainted with the online possibilities that MetaChef offers with advanced and interactive 3D learning tools for education.
Automating visual content in 3D
MetaChef was founded in 2019 by father Marc Oude Luttikhuis and his sons Bart and Robbert. The company is located in the former Menko textile factory in Roombeek in Enschede, together with Foodatelier and DiDutch. MetaChef is a software company and delivers interactive 3D products and solutions for education, marketing, and research. Bart Oude Luttikhuis: "We create educational material with 3D for the best learning experience, among other things." MetaChef once started with its services for the food industry, but has since expanded its field of work to include the process industry and education." Bart: "In addition to applications in industry and technology, our solutions are currently also used in interactive 3D teaching materials for secondary vocational education (MBO) and universities of applied sciences (HBO). We currently offer 3D learning tools for the directions Food and Hospitality, People, Animals and Nature, and Technology and Process Technology. We are convinced that interactive 3D visualisation also helps students in secondary education (VO) to develop themselves better."
Unique digital insights
Bart: "Our 3D teaching modules connect theory and practice in an interactive way. As an enrichment of your current teaching methods or to take your educational approach to a higher and more interactive level." For example, the Almelo House of Skills, a partner of STO Twente, uses the 3D process simulations to show students the complete process of cheese making in a factory and help them understand it. They look digitally inside the process vessels and pipes and see what happens there and how the flows run. Bart: "We have also made such a digital 3D presentation for many other processes, such as a chips factory. In 3D, you see all the process steps from potatoes to ready-made chips in motion on your screen. In the factory itself, this is difficult for students to view or learn, but with our 3D teaching modules it is possible. We make difficult subjects or hard-to-access locations visually understandable in 3D, making them easier to comprehend."
Customisable
Students and their teachers gain access to one online platform, allowing them to use everything anytime and anywhere. The 3D learning tools are available for 3D web, AR, and VR. Bart: "With our 3D learning tools, education makes its teaching even more relevant and can personalise the content by enriching it with their own text, photos, and videos. Teachers can also create even more interactivity during their lessons by adding their own questions and periodically assessing the knowledge students have gained with the 3D learning tools."
Three parallel sessions
After the inspiring introduction by Bart Oude Luttikhuis, the participants were invited to three parallel sessions. They saw how MetaChef takes hundreds of high-quality photos per product with self-developed scanners to ultimately convert them into 3D models. The second session vividly showed how MetaChef's centralised digital cloud platform enables students to work directly with the 3D learning tools. The third session concretely demonstrated, using an example from a biology lesson, how you can learn everything about what the human heart looks like inside and how it works through 3D learning tools in a playful way.
Use of 3D learning tools in pre-vocational secondary education (VMBO)
This third session led to an inspiring discussion between the participants of this STO Café and the specialists from MetaChef about the applicability of 3D learning tools specifically in technical pre-vocational secondary education (VMBO). With the development of these 3D learning tools, MetaChef responds to trends in VMBO education, such as high workload, declining educational quality, and motivation problems among students. 3D learning tools address these developments with flexible, digital learning tools, the desire of VMBO education to digitalise, and the will to teach everyone digital skills, regardless of level. However, the discussion revealed that 3D learning tools would be perfectly applicable in technical VMBO, but that the 3D learning tools themselves would need to incorporate more concrete test moments that assess the knowledge gained by participating VMBO students up to that point. This is part of the new product currently being developed by MetaChef. A second conclusion from the discussion was that 3D learning tools do not replace existing physical learning in VMBO, but are a 'need to have' for today's challenges in education.
Thank you, MetaChef!
Afterwards, the sun was shining brightly outside and the closing drinks were moved outdoors, an atmospheric start to the autumn holiday. MetaChef, thank you for your hospitality and excellent explanation!
Source: STO Twente