Robert Ashford to Visit VT

I’m pleased to announce that Prof. Robert Ashford will be visiting Virginia Tech in November, during which he will take part in a series of events related to the concept of Binary Economics. The first of these events will be a SPIA seminar on November 6, during which Robert will make the case for “democratizing capital acquisition” by broadening competitive market opportunities to acquire capital with the earnings of capital – see the flyer below for more information about this talk.

Over the past several years, I have had the opportunity to work with Robert, leading to the two papers below published in the European Financial Review.

Ashford, N. A., Hall, R. P., and Ashford, R. (2012) Addressing the Crisis in Employment and Consumer Demand: Reconciliation with Environmental and Financial Sustainability. The European Financial Review, October-November, 2012, pp. 63-68.
Ashford, R., Hall, R. P., and Ashford, N. A. (2012) Broadening Capital Acquisition with the Earnings of Capital as a Means of Sustainable Growth and Environmental Sustainability. The European Financial Review, October-November, 2012, pp. 70-74.

I first became aware of binary economics when searching for alternative, transformational models of development. The importance of identifying new development pathways has only intensified following the recent global financial crisis that has deepened economic inequality both within and between nations. Robert’s ideas relating to binary economic growth hold great potential to transform and reignite the economy. My interest in this subject, and reason for bringing Robert to VT with the assistance of an AdvanceVT grant, stems from the need to ensure that any surge in economic growth does not also create a surge in negative environmental and social externalities. My hope is that we can find ways to stimulate binary growth while transforming industrial systems towards inherently sustainable practices.

Global Forum on Urban and Regional Resilience

Today, Virginia Tech formally announced the new Global Forum on Urban and Regional Resilience. The forum has been created to bridge research, policy, and practice in order to address risk and build resiliency at regional and urban scales in a global context. The formal description of the forum’s objectives and activities is provided in the document to the left.

Last week, I had the pleasure of learning more about this new Presidential Initiative while attending the 4th Conference on Community Resilience in Davos, Switzerland. During the conference, I was able to ask President Charles W. Steger a few questions about the Global Forum and witness the signing of a memorandum of understanding between Virginia Tech and the Global Risk Forum. I captured these events using Google Glass, and with the help of Tonya Pruitt developed the video below.

At the conference, I spoke on a panel focused on “Approaches to Infrastructure Resiliency in Different National Contexts.” In my presentation (below), I described the activities of the IITK-VT Partnership, and how they contribute towards the partnership’s vision of creating sustainable and resilient infrastructure services.

Teaching Using Google Glass and Apps

With the semester just over a week away, I wanted to describe the platform I plan to use this semester to support my seminar on technology, globalization, and sustainable development (UAP 5784).

Whereas I normally use VT Scholar to manage all course-related activities, this semester I will use Google Apps to promote a more seamless exchange of ideas among the seminar participants. The other factor driving this change is I plan to use Google Glass to share important ideas/thoughts/insights with students that I have outside of the classroom. One dimension that makes this change possible is that Virginia Tech recently made the transition to Google Apps, which means that most students will be proficient with basic Google services such as Google Drive for sharing documents.

Google+ Community

The epicenter for the seminar will be a UAP 5784 community I have created in Google+. Since I wanted to create a space in which students would feel comfortable sharing their ideas, this community is private and only accessible to those taking the seminar. I have provided a screen shot of this community below, which shows a few posts I have made to the community. At this point, no students have been invited to join the community. This action will happen during the first seminar as we begin to explore the platform. As the semester proceeds, I hope this community will become a vibrant place where students can discuss and expand on the material we are covering.

The seminar will have two distinct parts. The first will consist of a group discussion of the assigned reading material. Students will be asked to read and “work up” the reading material with comments and questions before each seminar and be ready to engage in a discussion of the core ideas and themes that emerge from the texts. In the second part of the seminar, we will take a more reflexive look at how the students engaged with the reading material. During this discussion, I plan to develop a conversation around the material being discussed in the on-line community. Before each seminar, students will be asked to prepare a short post to the community in which they can discuss anything of relevance to the seminar. The post could consist of written, visual (e.g., photos, artwork, etc.), audio, and/or video media. Students could record a video (using a webcam) in which they describe their ideas and post it directly to the community for others to view. The process is simple so it will be interesting to see whether students prefer to write or record their posts. Each student will also be expected to comment on at least one post by a fellow seminarian. While student posts could document the questions they have about the reading material, I hope that the space will be used creatively. For example, students could discuss any additional material they consulted to better understand a specific subject. In addition, I will encourage students to try to document their key moments of learning in relation to the reading material, discussions, and/or assignments.

Google Drive

Since it is not possible to post files to a Google+ Community, I plan to utilize Google Drive to share documents and PowerPoint/Prezi presentations directly with students. Once each student has been added to the UAP 5784 folder in my Google Drive, they will be able to view all of the files saved in the folder. I currently have four sub-folders in the main folder labeled course admin, reading material, slides, and assignments. One nice aspect of the Google Drive set up is I no longer have to upload files to VT Scholar, which always proved to be a time-consuming process.

In addition to using Google Drive to provide students with access to key documents, I plan to set up an individual folder for each student in the seminar. Students will be asked to save their assignments in these folders and provide me with rights to edit their documents. I plan to review, edit, and comment on each assignment on-line and record a video using Glass in which I will provide each student with feedback on their work while viewing it on my computer. I hope this more comprehensive feedback will demystify my written comments and provide students with a much better sense of how they could improve their work. This aspect of the seminar, which is made possible by Glass, is perhaps the most exciting part of this new platform. I’m keen to see how students react to this type of feedback and hope to see a discussion about whether it is valuable on the UAP 5784 Google+ Community.

Google Circle and Hangouts

While I will create an email listserv for the seminar, I also plan to communicate with students using a Google Circle. At this moment in time, it is not possible to share a Glass video directly with a Google+ community. As a Glass Explorer, I was able to ask a “Glass Guide” (i.e., a member of the Glass development team) whether there was any way to do this. I received the following reply: “Currently you cannot share with a Community page, I’ll add this as a feature request.” Thus, this feature may be coming soon, but it’s not yet available. As a way around this problem, I can create a Google Circle that consists of all of the students in the seminar and post my Glass videos directly to this group. I may want to do this if I have an idea I would like to share and am away from my computer. I also received the following advice from the Glass Guide on how to share my UAP 5784 circle with the students so they won’t have to recreate the circle themselves.

“It is possible to share a Circle with your class, so they’ll not have to create Circles themselves. You can do this by visiting Google Plus and from the ‘Home’ tab in the top left corner clicking on ‘People’. Then click ‘Your circles’ and select the circle you’d like to share. Click ‘Actions’ > ‘Share’ this circle and click ‘Share’.

Your students would then receive a request on Google Plus to add that Circle and give them the opportunity to name it. Then you’ll be able to share to that Circle directly from Glass.”

The other aspect of creating a Google Circle for the seminar is that I will be able to initiate a Google Hangout with students directly from Glass. This will enable me to bring the students into conversations I might have with experts in a certain field or have them join me while I present at a conference. I hope to do this at the 4th Conference on Community Resilience in Davos, where I will provide my students with a bird’s eye view of my panel session on Approaches to Infrastructure Resiliency in Different National Contexts. [As an aside, I have purchased a NewTrent PowerPak + (NT135T) to charge my Glass device while it is under heavy use – such as hosting a Google Hangout. This mobile charger can fit in my pocket and connect to Glass via the micro USB cable. I hope the charger will enable me to go for an entire day without the need to find a power outlet to recharge Glass.]

As the semester proceeds, I will provide the occasional update on how this “Google platform” is working and whether the students find this new approach to be of value.

BMW i3

At the 2013 Asilomar conference, I had the opportunity to take a drive in the new BMW i3. Apparently, the three vehicles at the conference are the only i3s in the US at the moment. I managed to take a few pictures and a couple of videos of the event through Glass.

In the video below, Frank Breust (Vice President Governmental Affairs, BMW Group Representative Office California) talks about the various attributes of the new vehicle.

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Hard Case for Google Glass ($8)

While the protective case that Google provides with Glass is great for recreational use, I have been concerned that the case is not robust enough for traveling nationally/internationally. To solve this problem I started looking for a cheap and functional solution. While some Explorers have found a more substantial soft case – e.g., see the Case Logic GPS & Media 5-7″ In-Car DVD Player Case or (if you love Star Wars) the Millennium Falcon bag – I decided to look for a hard-case solution.

Since my office at Virgina Tech is located 200m from our local art supplier, Mish Mish, I took a break one morning to see what they could offer. I found what I believe is the perfect solution for me, a 10 inch Art & Craft case made by Art Alternatives. The case retails at $7.99 and the Glass case fits perfectly inside (see the pictures below). The nice thing about the case is that it has room to hold my smartphone and the various chargers I travel with. The case gives me some piece of mind that when I try to squeeze my backpack into an overhead compartment on a plane or train, the Glass device will be protected.

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I decided to jazz up the case a little by adding a sticker that came with a Samsung Chromebook I just purchased.

Bill Claus on Sustainable Blacksburg

In the video below (taken using Google Glass), Bill Claus describes the various activities of Sustainable Blacksburg. I spoke with Bill during Blacksburg’s annual Steppin’ Out Festival.

Hangout with Mozambique Team

This afternoon I was able to connect with my research team working in Nampula, Mozambique via a Google hangout. I used my Glass device that was tethered to a smartphone. The picture below (taken via Glass) captures the moment I connected with my colleagues. What is exciting about this platform is that I can now connect with my research team from any location in the US, which I wasn’t able to do previously.

First Glass Meeting

Today I met with Megan O’Neill, Brian Matthews, and Shelli Fowler to hold an initial discussion of how I might use Glass during my seminar this semester. The video below was taken using Glass. The quality of the image is good, but the sound quality is very poor at times (i.e., you may need to use a headset to hear what is being said). In the future, I will need to sit closer to the person I’m talking with in the hope that the microphone will pickup both sides of the conversation. As you can hear, my voice comes across loud and clear.

For those of you who are interested, the 29-minute video has a size of 1.2 GB (about 10% of the space available on Glass). When I started recording the video, my battery power was at 94%. After 29 minutes of recording the battery power dropped to 19%. I estimate that I had about 5 minutes of battery power left. Thus, a good rule of thumb is to plan to record for a maximum of 30 minutes on a full charge. Another lesson from today is that it is probably better to record shorter and more focused videos. Such action would require a certain amount of advanced planning, but limiting a video to 2 to 5 minutes would be a good skill to develop.

During our conversation, we referred to the video below that discusses an interesting way of “reviewing” (rather than grading) assignments. One idea is to use Glass to record a short video in which I would talk about the good and problematic aspects of an assignment. Such a video could be individually (privately) shared with a student. Further, if the assignment were uploaded to Google Drive, it would be possible to edit and comment on the final product. Such a process could encourage students to continue working on and refining an assignment that they could later turn into a paper or use in a professional capacity.

Mindful Learning with Glass

About a year ago, I undertook a Faculty Development Institute (FDI) course on Strategies for Mindful Learning that planted the seed for my current project using Google Glass. With the fall 2013 semester approaching, I decided to revisit Ellen Langer’s book entitled The Power of Mindful Learning that accompanied the FDI course in search of mindful learning strategies.

My challenge this coming semester is how to effectively use Glass to augment my seminar on Technology, Globalization, and Sustainable Development. My initial idea is to record videos that will enable students to follow my thought process in creating the seminar as we go – i.e., to hear me narrate about why I included or excluded certain subjects or material, what advice I was given by mentors/colleagues in the design of the seminar (including, for example, how their facial expressions added weight to the subject matter selected), capturing conversations with guest speakers about what they could cover before they speak in the seminar about a narrower subject matter, etc. The basic idea is to capture the “behind the scenes” aspect of the seminar, which is often where much of my insight and learning occurs.

While the students will not have access to the Glass device, I will challenge them to capture in a blog post (or something similar) how they approached an assignment and what ideas/thoughts came to their mind when crafting their response. The purpose of this reflexive writing is to help students better understand their perspective on the subject matter and provide me with some insight into their frames of reference.

As Langer (1997, p. 138) writes, “When we are mindful, we recognize that the way in which we tend to construct our world is only one construction among many.” For me, this sentence captures the essence of what Langer is writing about. Being mindful is about being open to new information and to new ways of thinking or categorizing information, and recognizing that multiple perspectives are possible. As I reread Langer’s text, it reminded me of a productive interaction I once held with Peter Söderbaum about his notion of Positional Analysis (PA) and the importance of conditional conclusions. Any conclusion (or policy, strategy, program, etc.) is conditional in relation to the ideological orientation (i.e., perspective) from which it is considered. Put simply, a conclusion may look promising from one perspective, but have major drawbacks when considered from a different perspective. Peter’s idea is to promote learning by recognizing that there is no best or optional solution, but rather a range of solutions that look quite different depending on one’s ideological orientation.

My challenge this fall will be to mindfully explore with students one of the most important and complex subjects facing humanity – sustainable development. Langer’s strategies to promote mindful learning will surely assist in this task. One of the first discussions I will have with students will consider how our automatic organization of perception/information (see Langer 1997, p. 103) may limit our ability to see potential solutions to the problems we face. [I will also link this discussion to the problem of source amnesia (see Langer 1997, p. 86).] One could argue that our need to simplify or box issues into silos results in the single-purpose design of policies that fail to comprehensively address unsustainable development. In response to this challenge, Nicholas Ashford and I have called for the multi-purpose design of policies that integrate issues such as industrial policy, meaningful employment, environmental protection, competiveness, and trade initiatives into long-lasting sustainable development. It will be interesting to see whether adopting a mindful learning strategy throughout the semester will lead to new insights that can help advance sustainable development. I’m looking forward to the possibilities. In the words of Langer (1997, p. 5), “Everything is the same until it is not.”

Glass Meets Colleagues

This afternoon, I introduced my colleagues Gardner Campbell and Brian Mathews to Glass. It was a fun meeting during which we explored the main functions of the device and began discussing how I might use it to augment my seminar this fall.

Gardner’s expression (adjacent) quite aptly captures his Glass intrigue and what the device could mean for society at large. Brian’s initial reactions to Glass can be found on his blog in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Next week, when the full research team assembles at VT, I will record and post our initial conversation about how we plan to use Glass over the coming months. By then, I should have mastered the new commands/functions that have just been release in the Glass software update (XE7).