Running with Scissors

I just looked at an interesting report from the Society for College and University Planning – they publish a quarterly report on Trends in Higher Education.

Here is one item in that report that I found particularly interesting:

Fact: Unlike other technology spending, wireless access is on the rise across the
country.

- The overall wireless market is likely to go over $200-billion in the next three years.
2004 again saw double-digit growth in wireless communications technology in the
US.
- Seventy-nine percent of colleges surveyed recently reported having wireless
networks, up from only 45 percent in 2002.

Our Thoughts: The convergence of wireless devices continues to speed up, as the old Dick
Tracey vision of instant access anywhere has finally come of age.

- Eventually the US will have to adopt the global standards used elsewhere.
- Global students will expect professors to be as flexible and adept at electronic
communication as they are, no matter where they are located. While faculty
members have mostly learned the power of email, ubiquitous connectivity means
much more than that.
- Power lines are now likely to be the way that everyone gets access into their house,
with wireless taking over from there. The rural-urban divide will finally disappear.

Technically, I guess that UMW could claim to be in the group that has wireless, though it is currently only available in the Simpson Library. The university is making strides to get this service available in all academic buildings next, but I have heard no mention of residence halls, dining halls, or other spaces.

I think if students find wireless in their classrooms, they will next demand it in their living spaces, dining spaces – in short, all the spaces on campus. Of course, all of this takes money, but I think total coverage of the campus will be a huge demand in the very near future.

You can check out the rest of the report here: http://www.scup.org/redirect/trends_05_03.html

I came across this surfing around some blogs when looking into “Vodcasting” (video blogging). If you are interested, you can check out the podcast here: http://ga3.org/podcast/podcasting101.html

…and here is the proof.

I’m writing this post as I head back home to Fredericksburg, Virginia from the NLII Spring Focus Session in Houston. This is my first time flying in about 5 years. I flew AirTran, and I must say it was fine as fine can be when you talk about air travel. But I think air travel is rough. You are advised to get to the airport early which can be a challenge in itself with the traffic you may have to deal with. You need this extra time before your flight to get through security, which involves taking off your shoes, belt, any outer layers of clothing, emptying your pockets, scanning everything, and passing yourself through a metal detector and getting a photo ID check. Once you get on the plane, unless you have the luxury of some sort of upgrade, you move to the coach section of the plane where you have very little space to fit your body into. I would not consider myself claustrophobic, but this is enough to make me a little uncomfortable (as a kid, I could not stand to be tucked into bed – made me feel trapped), but as long as the little air jet is flowing on me, I’m fine. And it seems that every time I want to travel somewhere, there is never a direct flight, so you have layovers and connections to deal with too. My travel to Houston took all day – left at 6:00 AM, got to the hotel at 3:30, while the actual time in the air was only around 3 hours of that total.

Though there is a lot to not be too happy about, I did experience a benefit from this – I had quite a lot of time for my own thoughts that I have not had in a long time. It is good to look out the window of the airplane and see the earth from a different perspective. It is good to have a chunk of time to think about work projects, reflect on recent events, and have an extended cell phone conversation with my sister on her birthday. It is good to miss my wife and kids.

Not to mention that the Focus Session was a good reason to go – got a few ideas for some new things, but also got a good feeling that the work my colleagues and I have been doing at UMW is quite good and a thing to be proud of.

So after all the introspection, it will be nice to land and get outside of my own head again – but I’ll have to remember that every cloud has its silver lining – sometimes you can see it so much clearer from the air.

If you are interested, there are blogs and podcasts from the conference available here: http://blog.educause.edu/default.aspx?GroupID=17&GroupName=NLIIFeaturedBloggers