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Technology-Enabled Teaching >> If You Build It, We Should Come
6/28/2005
As these pre-design and design development phases move toward developing construction documents for bidding and building, the campus technology representatives are consulted for their input. But importantly, whether this happens toward the beginning of the process or the week before the bid g'es out is a determining factor in the success of any building project from a technology standpoint. Kari Campbell, director of Technical Services at Minneapolis Community and Technical College, (MN) remembers a recent project: “Technology was the last thing considered. We were left to review the plans to try and find the things that were missing. Electrical outlets, lighting, and switching of lights are often not part of the planning. But when [technology is] left to the very end instead of being integral to the planning at the very beginning, it becomes a conflict.”
The importance of coordination with the electrical engineer especially, is hard to overstate in technology planning and design. As for what information the electrical engineer needs, Gayland Bender of St. Paul, MN-based consulting engineers LKPB (www.lkpb.com) explains: “Each design team member needs to know enough about technology to determine how it may affect his respective responsibilities for design of the facility; therefore, the electrical engineer should be asking for the input early on. He should schedule meetings specifically for technology input to the building space program, to capture interface requirements such as computer-grade quality power for electronically sensitive equipment, proper light controls for rooms with multimedia presentations, and isolated ground boards in technology rooms, to bleed off static electricity and establish a uniform ground plane for the operation of all equipment.” As the member of the design team who specifies electrical outlets, lighting and light switching, electrical screen connections, power protection, ceiling projector outlets, conduit inside of walls for security/multimedia/structured cabling systems, and sleeving for low-voltage pathways throughout a building, the electrical engineer needs to understand, early on, what the owner’s present and future needs will be.
With respect to technology, one of the main functions of the electrical engineer is to ask questions. Clients often question such an inquisitive approach, says Brian Rice, with Minneapolis institutional architects Horty Elving (www.hortyelving.com). “Some ask, ‘If you’re the expert, why are you asking this?’ But asking questions might open up options that they weren’t aware of, and if we can avoid putting something in that d'esn’t belong, why not avoid changes in advance by listening to the end users?”
Consultants
Problems with cell phone coverage aren't uncommon on college campuses. There are two main reasons: The beefy structure of historic buildings can block cellular reception within walls, and, on more remote campuses outside cities, signal coverage can be light. Thompson Rivers University (TRU) in British Columbia has selected SunGard Higher Education's Banner Unified Digital Campus (UDC) to integrate its ERP systems. DVcreators.net has released DV Kitchen, a new video encoding and publishing application for Mac OS X designed specifically for creating materials to be posted on the Web. NEC this week debuted four new projectors targeted toward education applications, along with a new MultiSync LCD display. The new NP-series projectors are entry-level models started at $899 but are designed to provide high light output, support for closed captioning, and built-in networking capabilities. Software frameworks are enjoying enormous popularity these days among a range of developers. It's popularity well earned; frameworks provide powerful tools for building more flexible and less error-prone applications. They generally enhance developer productivity with out-of-the-box functionality. And they can free developers to focus on features instead of common coding tasks. Utility storage provider 3PAR has announced the release of the 3PAR InServ T400 and T800 Storage Servers. The new hardware is built on the company's third-generation InSpire architecture, featuring the 3PAR Gen3 ASIC with integrated fat-to-thin processing.
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