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Opinion
Transforming Higher Education: Green Campuses in the 21st Century
7/26/2006
- Charging Power: So, what’s the most pressing concern for people like you and me nowadays, especially when we travel? How about power? Finding and hooking up to electrical power for your gadgets? I remember when I first saw an advertisement for one of those backpacks in which you can leave your camera and cell phone and just plug the bag into the wall. The bag charges your devices. Cool, but it d'esn’t charge laptops, just smaller gadgets.
However, a new device from DoCoMo and Aquafairy is so much more exciting. It uses fuel cell technology and converts water into hydrogen to get its fuel. You buy the device for under $100, and it will recharge your devices (probably not laptops, yet – sigh) several times, just as quickly as if they were plugged into a wall. Since it is, itself, a tiny device, it can go anywhere you do.
We all thought fuel cells were for cars. Apparently not, and if we’ve got stuff this cool already heading toward the marketplace, the possibilities for a lot more versions of the same thing appearing in unexpected places in the marketplace approach inevitability.
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The Power of Acceleration: Speaking of cars, a completely electric (batteries from Dell) convertible roadster, both beautiful (design from Lotus) and expensive. That’s cool, but: It accelerates from zero to 60 mph and then back down to a stop – all in 9 seconds. Nine seconds! Designed in Silicon Valley by computer people utilizing contracted automotive engineering design talent, the Tesla Roadster is selling for something like $80K, and creating a new market as it d'es so. Intended to compete head to head with the Porsche 911, the Tesla Roadster has fuel costs of about 1 cent per mile. The company will use the relatively larger profit margins from this niche luxury car to help fund the 2008 production of a fully-electric family car, costing much less.
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Better than gadgets, though, there is a whole world of consultants out there pushing hard to transform the marketplace, too. I think their efforts are going to make a big difference. One example: The Saving Green by Going Green Accelerator is a good example of a product that is as much information based as anything else. If you are into being an entrepreneur, you’ll enjoy looking over this modular process to stimulate a local marketplace or economy with money-saving green ideas.
- Getting the Money Right
A clear sign that online and distance learning is maturing is that we are struggling with how to organize and fund these programs on an ongoing basis.
- Technology and Campus Services
Can auxiliary services be mission-critical? You bet they can. With tuition on the rise, Auxiliary Services departments at a variety of colleges and universities are proving that they can innovate and still save their parent institutions cash.
- Ad It Up
Commercials on television tend to enrage me and laugh tracks are guaranteed to give me a headache. Plus, where do people find the time to watch TV?
- What Is the Purpose of an Electronic Portfolio? Is the Answer the Key to Your Successful Implementation?
Among many themes, Margaret Price explores the theme of purpose in her Viewpoint. One purpose of ePortfolio is to reflect on change from a beginning to a later point in time. In a future Viewpoint, Margaret will return to the SpEl.Folio and we’ll see how her thinking and her project have evolved.
- Making Faculty Smarter about Smart Technology
If you’re not also enabling the ‘why’ or ‘what’ behind the tech tools you give your faculty, you’re not enabling effective use of those tools.
- Smashing the Shackles of Intentionally Dysfunctional Technology
Until last week, it hadn’t "clicked" inside my head that the Library of Congress could or would make specific exemptions to copyright laws.
