Possible Sandbox Lab Opportunity

[kevco]

Hi all, I was in a Faculty Senate Computer Use Committee meeting today
and Steven Yourstone from Anderson School mentioned that he is on the
building committee for the general classroom building (to be called a
"Collaborative Teaching & Learning Center") scheduled to be built east
of Zimmerman. Don't know the details of the building project, but he
mentioned that one of the ideas being discussed for the facility is a
"Teaching Sandbox" which sounds like it might be an excellent location
to also incorporate an open source lab. He said the building committee
is meeting every Thursday from 9AM-11AM on the College of Education
Building 3rd floor conference room through the end of May.
Unfortunately I can't make it tomorrow, but perhaps we could have
someone from the OSLC attend one meeting next month to get the scoop
on the teaching sandbox and whether they'd be amenable to
incorporating an OS lab. -KJC

[Chris Holden]

Dang. I can't go today either, but I would be happy to go next week (if my baby boy isn't here yet). I would really like to be able to give input on this sort of thing. 

An example that might be worth sharing is my recent ARIS Global Game Jam. Johann, Anne, and others at Centennial were very kind and gave us some space to use in Centennial for mobile game design. The room in the library that's essentially perfect for this task is 155 (not a room that's available for registration, just a good example of room design for this sort of thing). The room we chose was the conference room (255) and not the computer lab (253). Having a space that lends itself to small team collaboration (tables for a few people each, whiteboards, a couple big screens to throw up communal resources, easy to reach power for many laptops, reconfigurable to match circumstances) is more important for game design than having a bunch of computers. The facing forward, fixed desk situation that is typical of computer labs makes this kind of work very difficult. The very large basecamps for the Jam in Madison, often instructing 50 students at a time, with many more rooms to choose from, found rooms similarly configured, large rooms probably more intended for lunches and keynotes, to be perfect for them.

As a point of minutiae, large TVs are far better than projectors in my opinion. They are easier to view in any circumstance, do not become almost useless in good lighting, have better color rendition, are easier to hook up to on the fly, last essentially forever unless they are damaged instead of having bulbs that burn out every few thousand hours, have higher resolution for less money, etc.

[kc brady]

I tend to think of a tech-teaching sandbox as a virtual space, not a physical one. And, especially with various open source projects, I think what's needed is a server -- with support.