Students’ Association supports technology
March 3, 2009
Brandon Van Meter
The SDSU Students’ Association unanimously passed a resolution in support of the Active Learning Cloud, while agreeing to a $3.72 increase in student fees.
The resolution outlines the organization’s support for this plan and its proposed additions to wireless infrastructure on campus. All university classrooms, all college-specific classrooms, additional teaching labs and all major common areas will be the focus for continued updates.
For SA senators like Patrick Weber, the main focus of the student fee money needs to be invested in wireless technology.
“The vast majority of this fee goes to wireless; $90,000 is budgeted annually for bandwidth,” said Weber, AL Cloud committee chairman.
Mike Adelaine, vice president for information technology, is very excited that the resolution passed.
“This is really all about getting to participate in making AL Cloud work to it’s best potential,” said Adelaine.
Another facet of the AL Cloud is building new classrooms – Active Learning and Active Learning Team rooms – that facilitate in-classroom communication through technology. While SA agreed with investing student fees, any new classroom layouts will experience a two-year experimental phase, with access given to all university departments.
“The concept of testing the active learning rooms is going to do really well,” said Adelaine. “Testing it in our environment will be a great asset. This way we can see things like what size of these classrooms works best and what teachers like and don’t like about them. Our university is not like every university, so we need to find what will work best for us.”
The current plan will continue to be tweaked and finalized to bring before the Board of Regents during its April 2 and 3 meeting. The BOR must approve the plan before it is implemented.
“Right now we just need to focus on getting the Board of Regents to get on board and agree to it,” said Adelaine.