Technology in Today's Classroom?

Hey all, Sarah here. I'm a sophomore at Purdue University in Aeronautical Engineering. Also, Bill's daughter.

As I start my second year of college, a lot of new technology is being thrown my way. Not only are there the online homework assignments and chat features available on our school's site like last year, Purdue, and many others, are stepping up in their technology to better educate us.

My Economics 251 book (Microeconomics) cost me upwards of $125. I went to class and they informed me that I can simply purchase the eBook of this text, as well as access to the online homework which comes with all new texts, online for $70. Wouldn't that be handy? So I returned my text to the bookstore, regaining my $125, and decided to buy the online version for only $70. But the online text is broken. When I came home and tried to register on CourseCompass.com, my course ID wouldn't let me buy the book and online homework access. I check my email and sure enough I have a message from my professor that the course is not letting you register without a new text. She's working on fixing it and it will be up soon. That was last Tuesday. It still isn't working. I'm excited for the prospect, but I worry about why it is so complicated. The technology is simple enough, but is it too hard to coordinate all those 400 students in my lecture? Shouldn't be, but something apparently is.

Another interesting new developement, and I think it is far more interesting than online texts, is my Introduction to Aerospace Design course. There are two sections of the class. Section one is over 100 students, taught in a lecture hall with overheads, whiteboards, or powerpoints, whatever the professor desires. Section two, my section, is about 40 students. We learn in a computer lab, in a virtual world. We play the role of interns working on a project for a large corporation called AeroQuest. We were just given our first of two projects: to design a spacecraft to orbit first the earth, then the moon carrying a few astronauts. The two professors for the course switch each day which section they teach and the courses are at the same time. With all the information they doled out on Monday, needless to say I was excited for the test run on Friday. Unfortunately, it is also a bit of a failure. Like the eText from my Econ class, it couldn't handle all the students running around in the world at the same time. In the initial test run on Friday, everyone, after some initial downloading problems, got up and running and exploring our new "office environment" when the program promptly crashed. For the professor to get in and explain how the world worked, the students all had to log out. Hopefully with the design engineer of the program (a grad student here at Purdue) working on it this weekend, it will be up and running better on Monday. I'll keep you posted.

I had such high hopes on Monday for this new technology, and I'm hoping it ends up being worth my time after the disappointments later in the week.

I'm pretty busy here, but I'll try to submit a blog when interesting stuff happens.

Sharing Data for Fun and Business

I have been thinking about sharing data via the web and noticed that many folks struggle with presenting the data in a structured manner. Given the spreadsheet is the "standard" method for sharing and structuring data I wanted to find a way to integrate spreadsheets into a web page to make it easier for people share structured data.

Below is spreadsheet (obviously a work in progress) of some of the tools I use or would like to use, created in Google Docs. Using the sharing features of Google Docs, I select "Publish as a web page" and then after selecting what parts of the spreadsheet I want published, select "HTML to embed in a page"

Copying and pasting the HTML in this blog or your own web page and you have an integrated live spreadsheet. You can update (or allow others to update) the spreadsheet as changes occur and the readers of your blog will be fully current on the information you want to share.

Try this out for your family, your business or the organization you work with and start sharing today.

My Blackberry Turned on my TV

I am a big fan of my Blackberry and use it for many things from email (the original function) to phone calls to listening to music via the Pandora app. Recently I stumbled across a new use for the Blackberry, as a universal remote. A company called Unify4Life has a piece of software for your Blackberry that takes advantage of the bluetooth capabilities in the Blackberry to talk to a piece of $99 hardware they call the AV Shadow that then talks to your AV equipment via IR.

The software utilizes a web database to get the proper codes for your AV equipment and allows you to create activities (like Watch TV) that can turn on the appropriate pieces of AV equipment (TV, cable box, home theater, etc.) in what appears to be similar to Logitech's Harmony universal remotes.

Of course there are a number of questions about this such as can the Blackberry coexist with a true universal remote or does the person with the Blackberry control things when they are around (what happens when they are not)?

The Harmony works very well and has spent years working on their software and form factors, how will Unify4Life work outside of the slick YouTube video?

In addition to controlling AV equipment it can also control lights and even your garage door.

Of course adding one more function to my Blackberry just makes it worse when something happens to my Blackberry, but we will leave the single point of failure story for another day. Need to do some more research on the product and check on the "play" budget to see if we can do some hands on research with it.

For now enjoy their video ...

Wireless Power

On several occasions I have wished for and / or made jokes about wireless power and now Eric Giler and the folks at MIT have put together a demo of wireless power running a LCD TV and other devices. If this can be brought to market the "last wire" may disappear which is a good thing. Obviously it will be a few years before this happens and we will probably see wireless USB become mainstream first, but for now enjoy the video.

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Today's Technology is good, but look what the future holds

Just saw an amazing video I had to share with the Technology Plumbing community. TED is site that shares "ideas worth spreading" and in this case Pattie Maes demos her team at MIT idea's on how technology can evolve into a device that can give us something akin to a sixth sense about the people we see and the "things" we interact with.

Using existing pieces of technology they have assembled a "device" (at a very reasonable cost) that will allow you to be a smarter consumer by buying the "greenest" product, if that is what your objective is. Augment the hard copy media (newspapers, books, magazines) you are consuming with updated and extended information or know your plane is delayed just by having the device "look" at your boarding pass. Calling a person by using your hand is particularly impressive.

To get a better understanding on this concept and how it differs from other concepts such as Microsoft's Table check out the embedded video and then post your comments at the Technology Plumbing blog or share this posting with others.