The Greening of the Digital Landscape

Guest Column by Jason Ohler

Suddenly everyone’s favorite color is green. Not the color of money and envy but of their antithesis – environmental embarrassment. We are slowly awakening from our high technology revolution the way we do from an engaging movie, shedding our suspended disbelief to rediscover the world around us. What we see is that our relentless push for change has come with a price tag, namely the generation of a mortifying amount of computer generated landfill.

Much of today’s green concern about computing focuses on energy conservation and more efficient, earth friendly ways to discard yesterday’s model. But almost none of it focuses on a lifestyle change we have quietly embraced that expects us to upgrade every two years. After all, our throw-away culture is also our economic engine, unrelenting in its desire to make room for the new at the expense of the previous. It is built upon faster, lighter, cheaper…always with a shorter half-life.

The result is that we are generating piles of old gear that has no reasonable expectation of use beyond its very short life cycle. If you are 40 you have probably already had and discarded at least a half dozen computers, not to mention numerous television sets and other now quaint digital memorabilia. Sure, you gave your last laptop to your niece, who will no doubt get a few year’s use of it. But eventually not even the indigent will take it because it is, basically, useless.

I got to see this first hand recently when I volunteered to head up Operation Seek and Discard. Our mission was to search every nook and cranny in my University of Alaska office building for defunct technology that was resting in some out-of-sight-out-of-mind place. For one week, myself and a brave cadre of colleagues spelunked under desks, in closets, in filing cabinets long ago locked, and managed to scare up enough obsolete tech to sink a mainframe. It turns out that a lot of the defunct gear was hiding in plain sight on people’s shelves and desks. We had just learned to ignore it, the way we had learned to ignore the water cooler that hadn’t been filled in years.

At the end of the week, the dispossessed pieces of tech were gathered in a pile in the center of a large room, forming a collage of hulking desktop computers, low resolution cameras, VHS players and a mishmash of cords and cables that held it all together the way spaghetti holds together a fine Italian meal. People would come by and stare before shaking their heads and saying, “Remember when we would sell our own kids for one of those things,” pointing to a color printer the size of a small refrigerator. “Now we can’t give them away.” Alas, we can’t give our kids away either.

As I stared at all the obsolete tech silently huddled together doing the dance of the digitally dead I felt a mixture of guilt, sadness and denial. After all, I was one of the digitally hopeful who helped convince the forces of the industrial age to walk out on to the leading edge, only to watch the edge sprint away from us at gigaspeeds. The pursuit of staying current quickly became inevitable but impossible. This mess was my mess.

So much of this comes as a surprise because the digital age has so drastically redefined the concept of obsolescence. Cars with seized engines and rusted out frames are still good for parts. In fact, we have junkyards dedicated to their utility. But that isn’t how the digital age works. Most of the stuff we had to get rid of in Operation Seek and Discard worked just fine. The only problem with it is that it was… sloooowwww. And because it was slow, it had become incompatible with the faster technology everyone else was using.

The good news for our institution was that it did a good job of wringing every last drop out of technology that the public would allow. After all, the public will be the first to criticize an educational institution running last year’s gear. But the bad news is also the good news. Despite anyone’s best efforts, the digital age seems destined to generate landfill by the truckload. This could change. If the public demanded laptops made out of spare parts and recycled cardboard I am sure the engineering community could rise to the challenge. But I don’t see that happening soon. And it’s not just institutions that make a mess – we do it too. We wouldn’t dream of making our kids use slow computers running yesterday’s operating system. It’s the digital age equivalent of not feeding our children.

At the end of the Operation Seek and Discard I had created two piles. The first was stuff that we would either melt down for scrap, donate to the local gun club for target practice or ship off to state surplus. That is, anything that was over three years old. The second much smaller pile consisted of stuff we might actually use. While much of pile two was on the cusp of obsolescence, there was one piece of technology that had been around for 30 years and still had another 30 years left in it: the upright Royal vacuum cleaner. The custodian claimed that.

What do we make of all this? Surely schools can’t live with yesterday’s processor speeds. It’s downright irresponsible. And they can’t continue to force students to stare at fuzzy screens. That’s inhumane. So we wait for some social movement, some enterprising green company, some funded mandate from the government that will make green computing truly possible. When it comes perhaps it will allow us to at least reuse our computer casings, inserting new innards as they become available. Perhaps it will entail a new approach to creating computers that makes their constituent parts truly recoverable and useful. Or maybe it will drive us to create computers that are comprised of so little that it won’t matter.

But in the meantime, we live with our mess, teaching the science of ecology as a game of catch-up in a world that is exploding with efforts to turn third world nations into first world competitors, complete with the purchasing power that entails. And while we wait for the other shoe drop in many countries embracing a digital lifestyle, we approach our own future like we do the federal deficit, once again passing the buck on to our children.

by Jason Ohler

Online Tutorials

by Margie Genereux

I recently stumbled on two great sites, and wanted to share them:

http://howtogeek.com/ - great software tutorials

http://www.oooninja.com/ - OpenOffice.org Ninja - awesome, easy-to-follow OpenOffice tutorials

Maine Adult Learning Portal

Link to Portal






This is an impressive use of technology for communication and collaboration of Maine's adult education offerings - a must see.

Apple Yanks iMovie 6 Download

Link to Article and Reactions

iMovie HD 6 Moving into Ether

Meeting on Diploma Stakeholder Recommendations

Informational Meeting
Diploma Stakeholder Recommendations for
High School Graduation Requirements

Western Maine Region

WHO:
This meeting is intended for K-12 educators.

WHAT:
This meeting will share the official recommendations from the Stakeholder’s Group on Graduation Requirements convened by the Legislature during the Summer and Fall of 2008. There will be an opportunity to ask questions.

WHEN:
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
4:00 – 5:30 p.m.

WHERE:
Lewiston High School, Room B109 Lecture Hall
156 East Avenue
Lewiston, ME 04240
Phone: (207) 795-4190

Info on other regional meetings can be found at the LIM Online Community.

Workshop: Netbooks & Linux

The Linux Netbook User Training

Feb. 18th: 9:00am to 1:30 pm
With David Trask

Overview

Registration
Information

Making Movies with Telstar 3 Group

Agenda

School Lock Down Efficiency

I just happened to find myself in the middle of a school lock down drill at an area middle school last week. I was working with a teacher on creating an EduBlog when the code came through on the intercom. So. . ..the usual locking-of-the-door took place and we huddled in a corner where we could not be seen. All of that is ho-hum, but what fascinated me was that the teacher immediately sent a quick email via their FirstClass school conference regarding the status of her room. Cascading clinks could be heard as classroom teachers and others reported out. I'm guessing within five minutes time, everyone at the school knew what everyone else was doing. Neat.

WikiHow "How to Behave in a School Lock Down"

Podcasting Anyone?

There are still openings for the following podcasting training sessions next week. Don't think twice - jump at the opportunity!

Podcasting for You and your Students

This workshop will present the fundamentals of planning, creating, and managing digital media files used to deliver a podcast. Participants will explore the rich collection of curriculum-related podcasts available for free on the internet, subscribe to appropriate ones, and create a collection in iTunes. Participants will then learn to write a script, and record, edit, and produce their own enhanced podcast for classroom use. Throughout the workshop, participants discuss the role of podcasting in education and how to use the power of the ubiquitous media players (iPods) as a teaching and learning tool to engage learners with diverse learning styles.

Link to site/registration

January 28 - Podcasting – Jay Middle School
January 29 - Podcasting - Great Salt Bay School

Free OpenOffice

David Trask just posted all you need to know about OpenOffice on Flubbernuggets.

School Reorganization Status

Proposed Reorganized School Units of Maine
Map
Maine School Reorganization Forum
Maine State Educational Policy Forum

MaineAIM

Maine Accessible Instructional Materials

Upcoming Trainings


Register

Unofficial National Celebration

Many folks are multi-tasking at work today as they watch streaming video such as the CNN/Facebook collaboration.

Guide to Inaugural Events

"So, How'd We Do?"

Wicked Decent Learning Episode #54
WDL Blog


Jeff Bailey and Dan Ryder interview their former students.

Learning in Maine Network

Start your own discussion topic at the Learning in Maine Network. It is easy to join. We are growing rapidly with over 40 members in the first five days. Go here to join.

Episode 53 "The Vertical Challenge"

Wicked Decent Learning Podcast

Learning in Maine Social Network

The Learning in Maine Blog/Wiki is nearly one and a half years old now, having started at the annual Castine Tech Conference a couple of summers ago. Just learning how to walk and talk. Today a Ning social network is being added to the mix. Do feel free to join and to add discussion topics and comments.

Learning in Maine Social Network

TelstarToo: Learning & Technology Projects

Monday, November 12, 3:30 - 7:30
Link

Online Mapping Getting Down to Earth

by Ed Latham

I had an OMG moment this morning as I was looking up an address for an appointment I have this week. I navigated over to google's fine mapping program and plugged in the address and sure enough a nice map was presented. I zoomed in to see the streets around the location to get my bearing and noticed that a little yellow people icon was present on the left side of my map. Being the curious button pusher I am I clicked on the little guy (sorry it may be a girl but looks like the guy on the bathroom doors) and dragged him to the location I was looking at. The screen when blank for a bit and then .... WHAM ... I was there at that location and was able to look around with 360 degree view! I was astounded. Sure it was photos of summer and we are under three feet of snow right now, but I can still see the buildings, trees, telephone poles and even a police officer pulling over a driver that saw his rights on the road a bit differently.

I had to check if my little bungalow out in the sticks was a virtual tourist trap yet. Typing in my very remote location, I was shocked to see that they had a road virtually in there that was less than 1/2 mile from my house. This got me anxious to see where in the world I could see. I went to Europe (virtually of course, I can't afford plane fare) and found that not all of the countries were available for this street level view, but some of the major ones were. I suspect there are many legal issues Google has to clear with each country before they can post such detailed pictures.

I keep hearing requests for virtual field trips and I see this street level access as yet another free resource for schools to take advantage of. Oh how my Geography classes would have so much more interesting to me with this tool available. I can see the building styles, the types of cars, the layout of the streets and surroundings and can see almost every tourist attraction in the world; What power!

Seems to many options for how a tool like this can be used. What do you think this might be good for? Does it go too far into privacy (they sure did not ask my technophobic parents if they minded their remote house way out in the woods was able to be posted)? Should a school ever have to buy a map again? Are maps even necessary any more with all the geography tools out there now?

Incidents of Prohibited Behavior

Question: Should Maine local schools be forced to send names of students who commit incidents of prohibited behavior to the State?

Village Soup: SAD 40 opposes reporting student names to state