New Power Management from Steelcase

A couple of weeks I indicated that I had seen something pretty cool from Steelcase.  They showed a group of us here at Auburn University their new system, Thread, to get power pretty much anywhere you want in a room by running it safely under the carpet.

Thread in action

So, notice that we have two layers in our sample.  The bottom layer is our regular floor, the top layer is our regular carpet.  The power module is very thin, making it invisible and infeelable under the carpet.  Specialized plugs make the appearance of the power outlets very flat as well.  And to top it off, a power pole can be added to this system that has 6 outlets.
The modules can be jigsaw puzzled together to cover central areas of a floor without power.
So, no need for a raised floor (expensive), core drilling (expensive) or trenching (really expensive, esp when asbestos gets thrown into the mix.

I am looking forward putting this kind of solution in place in some areas where power is needed in the middle of the floor.

Discussion with Dr. Jacob Wright

Yesterday, our college had the great pleasure to host Dr. Jacob Wright from Emory University to talk with us about how to publish successfully a fully enhanced ebook with the blessings of a major publisher.
While many of the discussions around epublications in education tend to center around text books -- and for good reason, the publication of scholarship, especially when focused on monographs, tends to be discussed less intensely.  Dr. Wright decided to see what happens and discovered that not only can it be done but done beautifully.

You may have read his article last year in the Chronicle of Higher Education:  What Enhanced E-Books Can Do for Scholarly Authors, 

Dr. Wright's book

His work in the field of biblical history may not strike folks as an obvious place to work on an epublication, but in many ways, this field is perfect:  the combination of very old texts that can only be accessed through digitized versions with a multitude of reimaginings these old texts allow for.  Combining a scholarly text with maps, art work, music, video clips, references to pop culture, and links to additional scholarly resources makes the potentially dense academic prose more accessible to a larger audience.  The result is an aesthetically pleasing work that the author very clearly enjoyed creating.

The discussions did of course move to such topics as how to negotiate with publishers, how self or semi-self publishing works with peer reviewing, how such publications may need to be considered for tenure and promotion -- I believe the participants came away with new ideas both for what kinds of tools to use and how to discuss these issues in their own departments.  The enhanced ebook we saw had been designed in iBooks Author and can be bought through iBooks.  Other tools mentioned were Atavist (https://atavist.com/) and Creatavist (https://www.creatavist.com/) to create engaging epublications.

I believe any such discussion would need to include the university library as its resources and knowledge are an invaluable ally in getting such publications accomplished -- maybe even going so far as having one's own digital university press...

EASL LITE

Here is one idea for turning a classroom space into an EASL space without spending a fortune.  The room seats 36 comfortably

EASL LITE

The tables are flexible but work best when sitting in groups.  We are sticking with the Steelcase Node chairs because of the flexibility in color and the comfort for the relatively short periods of time folks are spending in them.  With glass boards around the room, everyone has a space to collaborate.

Individual table in the EASL LITE

Teaching station with sharable display

Because we are not getting wiring to all the tables (power in particular), the room not only becomes more versatile but also costs considerably less.  As we are seeing an increasing number of iOS and Mac OS devices in student hands, we opted for Apple TVs that folks can connect to via AirPlay - not all students will have that kind of device but enough to allow for collaboration and sharing.







With two large displays, everyone has a good viewing angle, and the instructor still has a traditional computer with familiar software and/or the ability to connect a laptop via HDMI.

Control buttons for teaching station

So far so good -- though today I saw a really cool in the floor power solution -- but that is for another post.