Paula’s E-Musings

Spring is coming to Central New York. In our yards green grass has replaced dirty snow, green spikes are starting to emerge in our gardens, and there is the slightest hint of green buds on the trees. I noticed how spring-like green our surroundings are becoming as I drove to Albany last week to attend a Green IT Conference sponsored by the NYS Forum IT Greening Committee and the New York State Energy and Development Authority (NYSERDA). The New York Governor’s 15-15 initiative — to reduce energy by 15 percent by 2015 — is one of the most aggressive in the country. And as a member of the American Colleges and University Presidents Climate Commitment SUNY Cortland has also agreed to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by 20 percent by 2014.

Last week’s Green IT Conference dealt with issues of global warming and the role of IT in finding solutions to reducing the carbon footprint. Plenary session speakers were from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and the Gartner Group. Information Technology has a responsibility to reduce its own energy consumption through energy savings both at the enterprise and distributed levels and through responsible recycling of electronics. IT can provide systems for monitoring energy and systematically managing power campus-wide and offer leadership as campuses invest in and adopt new energy saving technologies. Reduce, reuse, and recycle was the mantra.

I found out about many on-line resources devoted to Green IT. Some of the more useful include:

The Green Grid — a global consortium dedicated to advancing energy efficiency in data centers and business computing ecosystems.

Simply Green: A Few Steps in the Right DirectionToward Integrating Sustainability into Public Sector IT — a Paper fromthe Center for Digital Government features best Green IT practices in state and local government

The Federal Electronics Challenges promotes initiatives to encourage the purchase of greener electronic projects, the reduction of energy during their use, and the management of obsolete electronics in an environmentally safe way.

Energy Cost Calculators — these Energy Cost Calculators at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Web site estimate the energy cost savings from buying more efficient products.

A Guide to Greener Electronics — a ranking by Greenpeace of electronics manufacturers based on their global policies and practices on eliminating harmful chemicals and on taking responsibility for their products once they are discarded by consumers.

It’s been a busy couple of months but I’ve finally had a chance to read this year’s Horizon Report, jointly produced by the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative and the New Media Consortium. The annual Horizon Report identifies and describes emerging technologies that are certain to have a major impact on higher education.

The Report provides descriptions and in-depth discussions of “key emerging technologies” that this year include grassroots video, collaboration webs, mobile broadband, data mashups, collective intelligence, and social operating systems.

Each year the Horizon Report identifies critical challenges that we will be facing in the next five years. This year’s report includes: significant shifts in scholarship, research, creative expression and learning which have created a need for innovation and leadership at all levels of the academy; the growing expectation to deliver services, content and media to mobile and personal devices; the renewed emphasis on collaborative learning which is pushing the educational community to develop new forms of interactive and assessment; and the need to provide formal instruction in information, visual, and technological literacy, as well as in how to create meaningful content with today’s web-enabled tools.

The significant trends discussed in this year’s Report are, in order of perceived priority:

• The growing use of Web 2.0 and social networking;
• the evolving way we work, collaborate and communicate as boundaries become more fluid and globalization increases;
• the increasing access to and portability of content as smaller, more powerful devices are introduced;
• the widening gap between students’ and faculty’s perception of technology.

In its fifth year of publication, this year’s Report identifies metatrends, or conceptual threads, that have been recurring themes each year. Three notable megatrends are collective sharing and generation of knowledge; connecting people through the network; and moving the computer into three dimensions. You can learn more about these and other metatrends and participate in an online discussion at the Horizon Project Wiki site.

The Report has full descriptions and examples of each of these technologies, challenges, and trends, and their impact on the educational environment. At SUNY Cortland we use The Horizon Report to frame discussions among technologists, librarians, and faculty and to provide a context for our strategic planning. I encourage everyone to read the Report in its entirety.