5 Careers That Didn’t Exist 10 Years Ago

Technology is changing the world, sometimes faster than education can keep up! With new career options developing, students now have a wider selection than ever before.

We believe in the importance of getting kids used to new tech and educational advancements early on. After all, this is what will shape the landscape for future career and job possibilities later on.

This week, we take a look at five new in-demand career options for STEM and tech-savvy students to consider.

Genetic Counselor

One field that has seen great benefits from new advancements in technology is medicine. New understandings of genetics and the data now available has opened up specialized opportunities for jobs that would have sounded like science fiction not too long ago.

Genetic Counselling can cover everything from cancer treatments to prenatal care and family planning. Some Genetic Counselors even specialize in specific fields like cardiology, neurology, or fertility.

Counselors look at each individual patient’s genetics, and examine the data to try and predict and prevent medical disorders. But the main part of the job, of course, is the patient. Genetic Counselors need to know how to connect and support each patient, and help explain the complicated medical side of things in ways that are easy to understand.

To be a Genetic Counselor, you’d need a Master’s degree in genetics, and likely would also need some certification in counselling as well. For students who love science and data, but are also very people-focused, this would be a perfect field to explore.

Nuclear Medicine Technologist

The job title alone seems daunting, but the actual job is less scary than it sounds. This is another new field that has sprung up alongside technological advancements in medicine—specifically all the new machinery that modern medicine relies on.

Nuclear Medicine Technologists operate all specialized medical equipment, like CT and PET scanners, gamma cameras, and other imaging tools used to help diagnose medical issues. The technologists need to know how to care for and operate the machines, a vital task considering how closely technology and medicine are tied.

And as medical technology continues to grow and improve, so will this career field. Continual developments and innovation means a need for technologists who understand and can work alongside doctors and patients to help reach a diagnosis.

The job doesn’t require a medical degree, but does take good interpersonal skills and attention to detail, as the machines are often delicate and complicated. An interest in robots and engineering is important, and there are accreditation programs available for students looking to enter this field.

Sustainability Manager

When it comes to business, everyone knows it’s all about the green. No, we’re not talking about money! The new trend for businesses is environmentalism and sustainability, and more and more companies are realizing that going green is the way forward.

That’s where Sustainability Managers come in. This role means making sure a company is doing all it can to enforce the most environmentally-friendly practices possible, but at the best price for the company. This takes a lot of creativity, and excellent communication skills to get everyone on board and make your ideas a reality.

And it’s not just companies that are looking to fill this new role. Everything from corporations to universities, and even large cities need Sustainability Managers to create long-term plans to help them go—and stay—green.

A degree in Environmental Science and a passion for saving the planet is the way to go for students interested in pursuing a career in this field.

Drone Operator

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles sounds more like a code name for flying saucers rather than a new career field. But UAVs and drones are flying us into the future, with major companies like Amazon, Google, and Facebook looking to expand their drone teams.

Drone Operators are in high demand, and for a large variety of purposes. While Amazon is looking to expand drone use for package delivery, news and media companies are looking for operators with more artistic talent to capture aerial footage in photos and videos.

For this new job field, the sky is the limit when it comes to possibilities. Some experts expect drones to be used in everything from agriculture to public safety, oil and gas exploration, and even in the film industry.

Some universities are already beginning to offer specialized courses in drone operation and manufacturing, but as it’s still a new field there are a lot of different backgrounds that students can explore. Drone Operators should have an interest in robotics and engineering, but can supplement this with skills in photography and videography, or other personal passions and interests.

Data Miner

What’s more precious that rubies and diamonds? Data—for companies, at least. In our new digital age, customer information and behavioral patterns are crucial for businesses to stay on top of the game, and they need experts to make sense of all the data they collect.

Data Miners help companies deal with “Big Data”. They predict future trends based on current and past consumer behavior, all extracted from the world of data that businesses collect. Everything from transactions to complaints and even social media reviews gets picked through by Data Miners to find patterns and make sense of it all.

And there’s plenty of related jobs within this data-driven career field. Digital Marketing and Social Media Management are new roles that are also becoming increasingly necessary as consumers take to online platforms for everything from shopping to costumer service. Businesses are finding that having an online presence is vital, and they need people familiar with how social media works in order to get the job done.

As a brand new field, there are lots of educational paths students can take if they’re interested in a Data Mining or other digital careers. A degree in Library Sciences is great for Data Miners, while a background in marketing or writing is useful for other jobs within the social sphere.

For students looking for new career opportunities, imagination is really the only limit. We are constantly seeing new fields open up, often in places we never even thought of.

And of course, students always have the option to invent something completely new! After all, the 3Doodler didn’t even exist five years ago.back to top image

Looking for more ways to bring 3Doodler into your classroom?
Check out our dedicated EDU section for classroom tips, lesson plans, and exclusive EDU bundles for educators.

Home is What You Create

“Change. Change is always hard, but good,” explains Leah Wyman, Head of EDU at 3Doodler. “I think mentally preparing for the stress and struggles and accepting that they will come but be worth it is key.”

The 3Doodler team knows a thing or two about change. With nine nationalities represented across our team, most of 3Doodler knows what it’s like to create a new life and find home in a different country.

Leah has called many countries home. She’s lived and worked in Germany, Iceland, Jamaica, Canada, and the Netherlands, and has now returned to the USA to join 3Doodler in our New York office.

In each place she has found ways create a sense of home, the same as many members of our team.

Daniel Cowen, Co-President and COO of 3Doodler, is a UK native who has lived in over six countries. “You start to look forward and work out how changes in your life will fit with the place you are in,” he explains. “In short, it’s about adapting, which at first is about friends, and eventually is about the deeper meaning of ‘home’.”

That deeper meaning and personal concept of “home” can mean something different to everyone, but in the end it all comes back to the basic senses. When finding familiarity, we rely on what we can see, feel, smell, touch, and perhaps most importantly, taste.

Food creates a strong sense of cultural identity, and is a major aspect of what we consider part of home. The smells and tastes of our childhood are often what connect us the strongest to that sense of nostalgia we associate with home.

"Like many people, taste and smells always trigger my best memories. I do my best to try and recreate my mom’s classic dishes." Share

“The first thing I try and do when I move to a new country is find the best Indian restaurant,” says 3Doodler Creative Director Faraz Warsi. Faraz holds Canadian citizenship, but still identifies closely with his Indian heritage. Having lived in the Middle East, India, Canada, Hong Kong, and the USA, he’s used to the shuffle and change of relocation. “They call us Third Culture Kids,” he says. “Identity crisis is sometimes more fitting.”

But through various countries and continents, Faraz has discovered a sense of home can always be found in the kitchen. “Like many people, taste and smells always trigger my best memories,” he says. “I do my best to try and recreate some of my mom’s classic dishes—the keyword being ‘try’. Sadly it’s never as good.”

Erin Song, 3Doodler Junior Designer, shares the same sentiment. A South Korean national who grew up in Hong Kong, Erin now works in the 3Doodler New York office. “In all honesty, I really miss the food,” she says. “I incorporate the food I would eat in Hong Kong by cooking a familiar dish whenever I feel homesick.”

“I am what I eat,” agrees 3Doodler E-Commerce Manager Jim Toernqvist, who emigrated from Sweden to join the 3Doodler team. “Sweden is very much a part of what I consider good in the culinary world.” Jim says he brings a bit of “home” into his new life by creating meals that remind him of Sweden. “Swedish cuisine is mostly simple and quick to make; my dinners are something to look forward to.”

But as Daniel said, change is all about adaptation. While the smells and tastes of home inspire nostalgia and make us feel more at ease in a new place, soon new foods become familiar and start to create a new sense of what it means to feel at home.

3Doodler Marketing Director Kelley Toy is a New Zealand native who now lives in Hong Kong. She says the new foods and tastes were the first things she found herself incorporating into her everyday life.

“Asian food is a pleasure to explore and experience,” she says, “and the convenience, all-hours availability and on-demand nature of food in Asia is something that is easy to adopt.”

But creating a sense of home doesn’t begin and end with what you eat, of course. Whether we’re aware of it or not, what we see every day ends up creating a pattern that we associate with home.

“For New Zealand, it’s a specific color palette combining sky, water, sand or dried grass, and green pastures,” says Kelley. “It’s a unique color palette that you don’t see anywhere else so I can always pick a New Zealand sky or landscape from these colors.”

“Yellow and blue is always my association with Sweden,” says Jim. “It’s the colors of the Swedish flag, and IKEA.”

“Grass. Green manicured grass,” says Dan. “It’s calm, trimmed, reliable, and there’s so much access to it through the incredible parks of London, which are what I miss most.”

“I really don’t want to sound cliché, but Chinatown really reminds me of home,” says Erin. “New York’s Chinatown has a very similar architecture and essence to the old areas of Hong Kong.”

For most of us who have moved our lives abroad, the concept of home is often oddly combined with reminders of change. Both become part of daily life as we continue to adapt and create something new.

Sometimes all it takes is one building to remind us of this. “When it comes to New York, it’s all about the Empire State building,” says Erin. “As much as I love the Chrysler building, the Empire State Building is the building I see every day when I walk to and from work. It is a constant reminder of how much my life has changed.”back to top image

From Classroom Dreams to Community Donations

In November 2016, 3Doodler joined with DonorsChoose.org to help make tactile tech a reality for classrooms across the USA.

Our pledge was to match each donation to projects requesting a 3Doodler EDU Bundle, dollar for dollar. We’re always looking for ways to encourage hands-on learning and tactile methods for teaching, and there’s no better way to do that than through the requests of teachers themselves.

Over the next few weeks we’ll be going into the classrooms that had their 3Doodler EDU projects fully funded through our matching campaign. We’ll speak with the teachers, and get an inside look at the difference DonorsChoose.org and 3Doodler has made. back to top image

Looking for more ways to bring 3Doodler into your classroom?
Check out our dedicated EDU section for classroom tips, lesson plans, and exclusive EDU bundles for educators.

3Doodler: Disruption & Reinvention Four Years On

Disruption is a word we hear more and more. Uber disrupted transportation, Airbnb changed the way millions of people book accommodation the world over, and social media has altered the way we interact with everything from friends to news. This theme of disruption and reinvention lives at the core of 3Doodler, a company that is built on the strength of our community and your never-ending support for our work.

As we hit our pen’s fourth birthday, we wanted to take a moment to celebrate with four stories of disruption and reinvention that made our journey possible, many of which started with you!

From one disruptive technology to another

3Doodler began with a mistake—a 3D print gone wrong. Back in 2012 we were a two-man band, inventing toys—anything that could be a hit—and licensing them to much bigger companies. Our go-to tool for creating new concepts was our 3D printer, an invention which is still disrupting industries large and small. The printer we were using missed a line in our print, leaving a glaring hole in our latest model. The print would have been unusable, wasting valuable time and materials.

That’s when inspiration hit: what if we just took the head of the printer off and filled in the gap?

And so, unexpectedly, disruption bred yet more disruption. The 3Doodler was born.

Community-led disruption

We had the idea, but without a community of users it would have ended there. Enter Kickstarter, and our community of visionary early adopters. Relying on the power of the internet, and our hope that you would recognize the potential of the 3Doodler (or just want to have fun with it!), we launched our campaign.

The result was one of the most-funded technology Kickstarters of all time, and a 25,000-strong community to join this amazing journey. A decade ago we would have been asking for money, pleading with retailers to take a chance on us, and most likely seen our dream end in disappointment. With community-led crowdfunding, this paradigm has been turned entirely upside down.

More than a passing fad

Disruption is only good until it is disrupted itself. We have made it a mission to ensure that whatever comes next, it comes from us. Most importantly, while we’re on our way there, we’ll do all we can to keep you engaged and inspired.

That very much speaks to our focus on growing a vibrant and engaged community (more on that soon!) as well as the wide product universe we have created around 3Doodler—ensuring you have every color of plastic you could need, as well as all kinds of accessories to help bring your ideas to life. Now with three pens in our product range—the 3Doodler Start, Create, and PRO—there is a pen for everyone, ages 8 through 80, hobbyist or professional, and we’re not stopping there!

Taking “toy” to 3D

A special mention to the 3Doodler Start, the little pen that could. Three years in the making, and as a newcomer to the highly competitive toy market, we wanted to get this one really right.

To do that we had to develop our own plastic, stubbornly insisting that it be biodegradable, and melt at impossibly low temperatures. We were also going up against a growing tide of tech-connected toys with a pen that is entirely (and proudly) “unconnected”.

The result was amazing, with the award-winning Start kicking butt at retail, and our whole team glowing at the amazing things made by our new community of young creators. Bye bye screens, hello drawing in 3D!

It’s humbling to stand here after four years, with an amazing team of over 30 talented people around us, on course to hit our millionth pen in the next few weeks. Thank you all for helping us on this journey, and we hope to provide many more disruptions in the years to come.

Sincerely and with thanks,

Max, Dan & Pete

Co-founders, 3Doodlerback to top image

Design Thinking at 3Doodler

“Why don’t you add Bluetooth? Or have an app? Or put more sensors in it? You can get in the Apple Store!”. But that wasn’t what we were doing, or what 3Doodler is about. Sure it’s tempting to adapt a product and add bells and whistles so that you can sell even more, but at what cost?

What we sacrificed was being able to say we were part of the Internet of things. What we gained was the ability for anyone, tech savvy or not, young or old, smartphone equipped or not, to use our pens.

The idea of a 3D pen is such a new and unexpected concept that it needed to be as simple and easy to learn as possible. A tactile experience, just like using a pen or a pencil.

We’ve stayed true to that philosophy for over four years, and even with the release of the 3Doodler PRO, our most advanced product, it’s all about getting tactile, and eradicating any barriers that might exist between a user and their ability to create what they want.

"It’s about connecting you and your movements with the pen, and there’s no better way to do that than with your hands"-Howard Share

If anything we’ve been on a mission to make our products even simpler, not more complex; and not more connected or virtual. For example, the PRO has dials where it could have had switches (or an app that communicates with the pen). As a user gently turns those dials the pen responds, raising the speed or the temperature the same way one would gently nudge up the volume on a sound system. It’s about connecting you and your movements with the pen, and there’s no better way to do that than letting people get hands on.

That same tactile experience has also driven much of what we do in education. Back in 2014 we started to work with teachers for the blind and partially sighted, using our pens to draw instant tactile learning aids. In 2015 we ran a case study with a UK-based school and found, conclusively, that the tactile experience of using the 3Doodler gave visual learners a welcome leg-up in class.

Now with the kid-safe 3Doodler Start, which is completely cool to the touch, the scope for getting hands on has jumped another level. Users can touch and mould their Doodles the instant they come out of the pen – and those same blind and partially sighted students now have a pen they can use safely without any concerns about hot plastic.

So while the world is putting iPads in front of kids, or trying to connect everything to the big wide web, we’re putting down the screens and asking you to pick up, feel and craft; to rediscover what you can do with your hands in an unvirtual reality. We’re using the power of touch – and not the screen – to take you back to an era (not that long ago!) when creativity and play meant doing something with your hands.

And it’s working. As we near 2017 we’ll be marking our millionth 3Doodler, with users creating everything from curricular aids, to architectural replicas, 3Doodled dresses and cars, as well as art that is being proudly displayed in galleries worldwide. That’s a staggering win for the tactile, and the reason we’ll always strive for simple and accessible rather than overly-complicated.back to top image

Written by Daniel Cowen, Co-Founder & COO

Design. Elevated. Introducing the 3Doodler PRO

In 2013, we made the world’s first 3D printing pen a reality. In 2015, we upped our game with the 3Doodler 2.0. In 2016, we aimed higher with the 3Doodler Create, and introduced a new generation to the wonders of 3D art with the 3Doodler Start.

Now we’re taking 3D printing pen technology to the next level, with the world’s most advanced 3D printing pen designed specifically for creative professionals.

Note: The all-new 3Doodler PRO+ has dropped! Get the most advanced 3D pen here.

The 3Doodler Pro The 3Doodler Pro

Designed With Professionals In Mind

As the first professional-grade 3D printing pen, the 3Doodler PRO is a unique and versatile prototyping tool.

Modular Prototyping Modular Prototyping

Its wide range of materials and applications makes it perfect for architects, engineers, designers, artists and other creative professionals.

Bring designs and ideas off the page to create models and prototypes that can help enhance concept development and aid in communicating vision and direction.

“What really makes the PRO so unique is how the device and materials come together to answer the needs of professionals,” says 3Doodler CEO and Co-founder Maxwell Bogue. “When we started the 3Doodler journey back in 2013, we had world-leading architects telling us ‘I want to do this’.”

“With new materials like polycarbonate that dream is a reality. The high-performance PRO can be used for the most advanced purposes to bring concepts to life, and become an integral part of the creative process.”

More Materials, More Design Options

Along with 3Doodler’s extensive range of PLA, ABS, and FLEXY plastics, the 3Doodler PRO introduces a range of new materials to expand design potential.

Wood filament Wood filament

Metal
Made from real bronze and copper, the metal filaments create sturdy and heavier structures that can be polished or sanded for more shine.

Wood
Made from real wood fibers, these filaments can make both delicate and heavy-duty creations that can be sanded or stained in a variety of finishes.

Nylon
The nylon filament has a fabric-like feel, and can be dyed into different colors with fabric dyes.

Polycarbonate
This rigid filament has a high melting point, and so structures created with polycarbonate can withstand high temperatures without damaging.

Polycarbonate filament Polycarbonate filament

Total Control At Your Fingertips

Speed / Temperature Dials Speed / Temperature Dials

The 3Doodler PRO gives you complete creative control and the ability to fine-tune your work as needed while creating.

With adjustable dials, you control both speed and temperature and the LCD display ensures you always know exactly what temperature you’re using. The built-in, high-speed variable fan also gives you control over how quickly materials cool.

A revamped drive system keeps the PRO going longer even under intense use and is designed to handle the wide range of 3Doodler materials.

All of this encased in a sleek carbon-fiber shell.

3Doodler Pro Vase Design Series 3Doodler Pro Vase Design Series
At A Glance
  • Can handle ABS, PLA and FLEXY along with new range of wood, copper, bronze, nylon, and polycarbonate filaments

  • Temperature dial allows for adjustment from 100°C to 250°C

  • LCD display showing desired temperature and indicators for each level

  • Dial-controlled variable speed settings between 10% and 100%

  • Side switch adjusts cooling fan: Off, Low, High

  • Larger and more advanced drive allows for wider range of materials, and for prolonged intensive use

  • Carbon fiber shell

  • Priced from US$249.99

The 3Doodler PRO is available now from our dedicated website. See more PRO designs and concepts by following 3Doodler PRO on Instagram.

3Doodler Create vs 2.0

We hope you’re as excited as we are for the newest addition to our family of pens, the 3Doodler Create!

While it might not look too different from the 2.0, the Create is a whole new pen! And just like your mother always told you, it’s what’s on the inside that counts. That’s why we’ve put together a handy comparison guide for you to get to know the Create better – from the inside out!