Building a Building

During our tour of the new Civil Engineering facility on campus, I was amazed at just how much forethought was put in to the entire process. This was just one building of a full-fledged campus of departments and inner-working systems, yet they seemed to have a very firm grasp on just what it was that they intended to use the facility for, as well as what they needed it to offer it's inhabitants. Listening to Jason Davis speak to our class about all of the many components in the building, both technological and not, It became apparent that planning for the future is one of the most important aspects of integrating technology in to our current society and just as well, a new building in general.

Hearing Jason talk about all of the hurdles he had to jump when planning a classroom in the Civil Engineering building had my mind jumping around to the similarities that my mother, a home economics teacher, was "screaming" about over the past year in her new building. A little bit of background first; My mother is a teacher in Farmington - my hometown. The Farmington school district just finished building the largest (in square feet) high school in Minnesota. In this school, my mother teaches in two different rooms; the foods room and more general classroom. In the foods room, there are 8 kitchen modules for student use. However, these modules are not set up in a manner that my mother feels is appropriate for learning and functionality of her classroom. One of the largest complaints she had was the absence of a sink at each module. Instead of this option, there is a large three-tub washing basin, like you might see at a restaurant. There are more design flaws that my mom would point out, such as the oven placement and overall placement of the modules in relation to the "teaching area" of the classroom. These flaws, are something that I wish would have been more well thought out than they were. In hindsight, the use of an individual who would act as Jason Davis did in the CivEng building would be quite beneficial to this new high school that Farmington spent a great deal of money on.

So what exactly does this all have to do with our technology in an administrative position? I think, in general, that this brought out the emerging themes of both "do your research" and "Plan for the future" respectively.

I'd like to write on the later for now. As Thomas Friedman has the ideals of a "flattened world" beginning in the early 21st century, the concept of globalization becomes a tremendous player in the ballgame that is technology. With information being so easily accessed, largely in thanks to web 2.0, there is a rapid growth of ideas and technology seems to speed up to a point where it is near impossible to keep up. This creates a need to always plan ahead for new emerging technologies and build your infrastructure around this rapid expansion.

To speak towards this, Jason Davis had said that there was a teacher at UMD who wanted to "shut off the wifi in her classroom". This seems to be a step back from where we are with our wifi technology. It was once a dream that WiFi be accessible in all rooms, and within not that short of a time, this was made possible. For an individual to want to limit that access, it is currently more of a hassle for the ITSS staff, but who knows - in the coming years, the technology to be able to easily switch off a hot-spot may exist and be a laughable hurdle to jump. Also, in this line of thought, the incredibly thoughtful implementation of modular flooring was a forethought that lends itself to future wiring and the constant changing technologies that may or may not occur during that buildings lifespan at UMD.

From this emerging theme comes the question of just how far in advance do we have to plan for? One question that I remember being posed to Sean Dean at Citon was "just how much do we hold out for? When do we simply buy what is current and plan on getting the time through?" Sean responded by saying that it is truly up to the user, but to be mindful of the constant changes as you use that machine to the capabilities it possesses. I feel that this was a really broad answer to a specific question, but had I been in his shoes, would have said almost an identical statement. This also is mirroring our conversation about the iPod's first few generations - or the "brick" phase. Without that technology to spring from, our minuscule touch-pad iPods wouldn't be anywhere near what they are today.

So without those mistakes in the foods room, or even with the modular flooring in the Civil Engineering building, just how ready are these buildings for the technology of tomorrow? Will they posses the means to housing what is to come?