Thursday, March 29, 2012
Using heat maps to plan district heat systems
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This is a great application of "big data", specifically Google and other infrared landscape imagery, from a UK organization, reported in today's Guardian.
Areas where waste heat from industry or wasteful buildings are shown clearly. Waste heat from industry can be recycled using district heat systems to heat homes and other buildings.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/mar/29/heat-map-decc?intcmp=122
This page is for memories, dedicated to the students, faculty, and staff of the old, real Unity College, and the people that made it. You know who you are.
What this is about
A long time ago, in an educational universe far away and almost certain never to return, the professors of a certain small college experimented with experiential learning and taught their students not just to "read, write, think, and figure", but also to do practical things with that learning. Educational theory and research results from Kurt Hahn to modern scholars suggests strongly that experiential learning works better, particularly for active young people. It also matters greatly that young people have the physical and mental confidence to do something positive with their learning, particularly to make social and environmental change, in other words, to lead. This kind of confidence comes with physical challenge and being made to defend your ideas out loud, among other things. The small college was built around these ideas, deliberately, by a group of determined and innovative educators. With this success, along came the inevitable bean-counters who believed such a valuable education was way too expensive for those students. Wanting to keep more of the students' money (to pay their six figure salaries, of course), they cut the programs the first chance they got and went all-online where the teaching help is way cheaper and less demanding of budgets for tools and materials. I happen to think it was well worth the investment for any student who really engaged with the opportunity, but... bean counters gonna count beans. So the college is, for all useful purposes, gone, or at least changed beyond all recognition and not any good at teaching anyone anything practical at all.
But the memories remain. And, despite the best efforts of the new administrators to erase them, so does quite a bit of open-source computer data to remind us of those memories, in the form of this and several other blogs and video pages online. In the case of this blog, the blog data were mine, not the college's, all along, even though they tried many times to get their cold dead bean-counter hands on them.
So fuck 'em. Oh, and yes, this particular professor cusses more now that I don't have to worry about pointy-headed supervisors. Fuck them too. Enjoy. And remember, llegitimi non carborundum.
If you're one of our former students and looking for stories you wrote or photographs or records of projects you worked on, just use the keyword search function or the chronological record to find your projects. They're all still here. Drop me a line using the comments section. I'd love to hear from you.
Blog Archive
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2012
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March
(12)
- Hopefull article
- Climate and political dysfunction from the NYT
- Kinetic sculpture?
- Using heat maps to plan district heat systems
- Extreme weather, for class
- Global warming visual
- The most important thing....
- In like a lamb...
- New PhD Program
- Thoreau's data used again
- Educational class system
- Wind turbine tour
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March
(12)
Additional Information
Email Mick Womersley at womersleymick8984@gmail.com
What is sustainability? Try this page here.
Other Blogs by Mick:
UCSAR, UCSustainability, Farm Diary
What is sustainability? Try this page here.
Other Blogs by Mick:
UCSAR, UCSustainability, Farm Diary
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