Magic Bands Go to ETSU

Magic Bands Go to ETSU East Tennessee State University has grown from a teacher’s college in 1911 to a full-blown university in 2016. With 11 colleges on four campuses, the university offers a range of curricula from business to medicine. The University is proud to have held costs down while maintaining a high standard. As the University gets deeper into the 21st Century, though, it seeks ways to utilize technology to create a â€Å"friction free† situation for faculty, administrators and students. It should be no surprise that it was Disney who brought the concept of electronic tracking and payment to the mass market. Caleb Kraft, writing in the Electronic Engineering Times opens his article with â€Å"Disney is no stranger to technology.† From the beginning, when the original Disney Land was opened in the 1950s, the theme park was at the cutting edge. The animatronics that drove many of the exhibits are crude by 2016 standards. It was impressive in its time and Disney has continued t o be a leader (Kraft, 2014). With the MagicBand, Disney takes the Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) process commercial. The good news is that the MagicBand is assembled from off-the-shelf technology. In that same article it is noted that the only â€Å"proprietary† component is one chip which has a â€Å"standard† part number except for a â€Å"DN† suffix which, presumably, means custom made for Disney. It would be easy, then, to have the equivalent device manufactured at a reasonable price. The hardware is priced reasonably, and the basic operational software is available. The problem is the â€Å"middleware† where the application is customized for the user (Violino, 2005). The question is whether or not it would make sense to invest in this technology for a college or university. The initial cost, the transmitters and receivers would be significant. In addition, there is the cost of that â€Å"middleware.† Not to be ignored is the requirement for a full-time, dedicated Information Technology (IT) specialist. One of the keys to making the device work is that it must be simple enough that it does not require training itself. A simple, one page â€Å"quick start guide† should be all of the documentation required. Or, as Creager (2014) suggests, make everything simple enough that a seven-year-old can lead the way. Assuming the answer to the core questions â€Å"does this technology make sense in a college or university setting?† is â€Å"yes,† then it is interesting to speculate what applications this technology could have for the school? There remains significant â€Å"friction† in the system. With engagement of the stakeholders in the University we can address this. Students, faculty and administration must be on board. But just consider how well things could work. First, and most obviously, the School Equivalent of the MagicBand (SEMB) (no citation, I just made that up) would function as your student identification in all that you do. Do you need to get into Dossett or Powell or Carter or Centennial Hall? Hold the SEMB to the door and hear the â€Å"click† as it unlocks. When you want to get into your own room? Do the same thing. Is it time to do your laundry? Gather it up and head down to the laundry room. Your SEMB will unlock the washer, unlock the detergent vending machine, and unlock the drier. It will not fold your T-shirt collection. Not yet anyway. But the guys and girls in the engineering college can work on that one. The Doctor Sheldon Cooper (The Big Bang Theory) T-shirt folding machine is already available, through Amazon, for twenty dollars or less. Surely the nerds in Dr. Keith Johnsons Department of Engineering Technology, Surveying and Digital Media can automate that task. Do you need a soda? The SEMB will handle the bil ling. When you head to the Market Place, the Treehouse, the Atrium or the Cave the SEMB will, again, handle the billing. More importantly, the SEMB will be linked to the kitchen system. This will allow the finest possible tuning of inventory in the kitchen, minimizing waste. Your personal preferences can be tracked and if you are not eating things that are good for you the food police will send a notification to your laptop reminding you that your diet is important, especially at your age. Since not everything is available on the internet (yet), students still spend time in the Sherrod Library. When you walk in the library will recognize your SEMB. Sit at one of the carrels and, again, the SEMB logs you in. The carrel terminal will come on and your library history will be on the opening screen. Now you can search for that article, â€Å"Analysis of Sixteen Utterly Boring Things† by Isaiah Lott that was published in the American Journal of Boring Stuff back in 1987. The laptop has already told you that this isn’t available through JStor or any of your normal sources so you are stuck looking the old fashioned way. Since the system traces everything, you are informed, from the carrel terminal that issue is not on the shelf. Fortunately, since the SEMB tracks everything, you also know that your classmate Roger has it and he is in carrel 26. You can walk down, ask if he is using it right then and borrow it. When you are done and have returned the issue to Roge r, or to the desk, you just walk out with the other books you needed. No need for a tedious check out procedure. That is already taken care of by the SEMB. The Professor has no need to worry about those mundane tasks like taking roll. As you walk into the classroom or the lab or the lecture hall just wave your wrist and you are logged in. When you turn in an assignment via the internet, the BlueTooth connection on your laptop has you logged in. If it is an assignment that you have to turn in as a hard copy the SEMB will log and bill your printer time. You will need to be careful with the friends you choose and the access you allow them. Remember, with the SEMB in place, your location is available if you are logged in to some place fitted with a receiver. You will allow some friends to have â€Å"full† access. For those in your inner circle, your location will be visible and they can simply come find you. Most, though, you will limit to your cellphone number and email address. If you are on a work study program the concept of a time clock is obsolete. Wave the SEMB and you are â€Å"clocked in.† When you leave the SEMB clocks you out. Be careful if you are required to use an ETSU vehicle though. The SEMB has you linked to the GPS. If you are speeding they will know. And by all means do not stop at a bar. If you have a Physical Education requirement the SEMB will log you in and out of the BCPA or the pool (it is perfectly waterproof). You can track steps or miles walked, run or swum. Do you care about â€Å"calories burned? The SEMB can take care of that for you. Those long lines to register are a thing of the past with the SEMB system. Your laptop recognizes the SEMB and logs you in. You can sit at the laptop, choose your classes, get registered, and have everything confirmed before your coffee is cold. If at some point there is an issue with your schedule your SEMB will notify you to check the laptop. All of this makes student life easier. The days of the paper class schedule or the combination lock are in the past now. Your locker at the gym? The SEMB handles that. There is no need to carry a heavy load of books any more. Your laptop or iPad is linked, via the SEMB, to the university system and in turn to the online sources your professors use. The SEMB system is important to the university administration as well. At the most basic level, reports of census, broken by class, college, time of day, day of week or any other cohort that administrators deem worthwhile, or simply interesting, can be drawn. No need to review a paper record to see if Survey of Twelve Boring Things 305 is actually being attended. The SEMB has provided a report of number of students, by name if that matters, how regular they attend, what grades they are getting and the rest. For counselors, the system provides the type of information they had only dreamt of as little as two years ago. How are their students doing in class? There it is on the screen with the click of a mouse. How is John doing in his major? A quick check shows that he still needs to get three core requirements taken and that one of them has to be taken next semester or he will not meet the prerequisites for the next level. With a click of the mouse and a few keystrokes he can send a message. And John, through the little â€Å"buzz† on his SEMB knows, in about a second that he needs to check. The fiscal office no longer has to work through a mountain of paper or a maze of spreadsheets. The SEMB is tracking every cent charged against every student’s account. If a student is getting close to his limits the notification is automatic. If he or she has overspent the fiscal department can be notified immediately and action taken. Reports are now largely automatic as well. The Department of Education requires beginning of semester, mid-semester and end of semester reports including basic counts and breakdowns by race, age, sex, religion and seventeen other categories. Nobody remembers why, but they do and since they provide a significant fraction of the University’s funding the reports must be filed. With the SEMB system in place, not only can these reports be filed, they are filed with a level of accuracy and timeliness that would have been impossible only two years ago. Is the Disney MagicBand technology suitable for the University setting? The answer is â€Å"probably yes.† Students who have grown up with computers, cell phones, iPads, xBox gaming consoles and the like will be comfortable with the system. For us, it is natural. Faculty will accept the technology as well. For them this is a truly labor saving system. Those mundane tasks, keeping attendance records for example, become automated and free faculty for the job of preparing for class and teaching. This is, presumably, what they want to do anyway and why they invested all of those years, first in school themselves and then establishing themselves in their discipline. The ease of scheduling meetings will provide another benefit. The primary resistance can be expected to come from the administrators. This is not a question of technical ability. Every office has computers these days and staff is fully familiar with how to handle the technology. Rather, the issue is in the nature of bureaucracies. Things have been done â€Å"this way† for years. Systems are in place and understood. Many processes, whether preparing reports or providing support, have reached the point of being almost automatic. Any change will result in disruptions and, as nature abhors a vacuum, bureaucracies, by their nature, abhor change. On balance, implementation of an SEMB-like system would seem to be a benefit to both the suppliers and consumers in higher education. The system could track parking too.

My Exercise Prescription for Paige Essay example - 1214 Words

Discussion and Conclusions Paige the prescription I have created for you is based on your fitness level. I incorporated all the aspects of which I tested you with and determined the mode, frequency, intensity, duration, rate of progression, and amounts of sets and reps for each components of your exercise prescription. Throughout our meeting, you discussed with me the types of activities you like to participate in. You expressed what you wanted to achieve through this exercise plan and you informed me of your likes and dislikes. You made it clear that you could exercise everyday and that your time availability was flexible. I would like you to exercise in some way each day, even if it is just stretching. You do not have to do the same†¦show more content†¦Having this amount of time is going to be very helpful in reaching your goals of increasing your VO2max and loosing body weight. I have not found any of your lifestyle factors that would hinder your progression through this prescription. Other than being aware of your nutritional habits, I see nothing keeping you from your goals. To further explain the prescription I will break down your prescription up into the different components of your exercise session. The warm up will consist of jogging for five minutes. You will maintain certain intensity with the ten second heart rate count range I calculated for you. I would like you to begin warming up by jogging either on the treadmill or outside. I choose jogging for you because I feel it will be the best warm up for you. In addition, you like to run and it will be a good transition into the cardio portion of your workout. You will need to warm up for at least five minutes to insure your body has had time to warm up. You may also bike to warm up as well. Your cool down will consist of a ten minute walk, slow bike, or slow swim using a similar heart rate range as that of your warm up. I would like you to walk as your cool down if you have been running. Walking will allow your heart to recover along with ensuring that your blood does not pool and your blood pressure stabilizes. Whichever form of cardio you prefer that day, you can stay consistent, keeping the same mode of exerciseShow MoreRelatedHealth Self Assessment1317 Words   |  6 Pagesaware of an individual’s health status. Our textbook authors, Meeks, Hait Paige (2009) describe the importance of self-appraisals and health behavior inventories in teaching students about their practices that will impact their health. In order to become an effective teacher who is enthusiastic about health education, the author of this paper focuses on gaining a comprehensive understanding of her health. After assessing my health through an internet tool available on the Council for ResponsibleRead MoreAccounting Information System Chapter 1137115 Words   |  549 Pages(interactions with external parties). Student answers should contain many of the things in Table 1-2 and Figure 1-1 as well as others not shown, as a retail operation differs from an application development enterprise. The author concludes the exercise by having the students turn to Table 1-2 and Figure 1-1 while he emphasizes the need for owners, managers, and employees of organizations to identify the information needed to make key decisions in the company’s business processes and the key

Encyclopedia of Clinical Neuropsychology

Question: Discuss about the Encyclopedia of Clinical Neuropsychology. Answer: Introduction: A small group of neurons secretes Neuromodulators, and they diffuse in large areas of the nervous system having an effect on a variety of neurons. They ensure that a particular neuron releases chemicals to regulate different groups of neurons, a process known as neuromodulator. Serotonin, histamine, and dopamine are some of the major neuromodulators in the central nervous system. These processes are quite significant for instance, dopamine reuptake inhibitors ensure blockage of the dopamine transporter and are thus used in the treatment of conditions such as depression and narcolepsy (Paice, 2007). Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors enhance the effect of a released serotonin by preventing its removal from the given synapses and are used to treat depression as well. Notably, neuromodulator is a type of treatment where direct administration of medication into the nervous system occurs. This is meant to regulate a particular cells activity with the aim of controlling pain. It is a subset of neurotransmission but differs in the way the neuromodulators are released. During neuromodulator, a whole neural tissue is subjected to the neuromodulators activity due to exposure. In neurotransmission, however, the release happens at a specific synapse. Importantly, neuromodulator does not carry the excitation of the inhibition from one neuron to the next, but it alters either the synaptic or cellular properties of the neurons. The process can be used to treat spasticity, epilepsy, movement disorders, and pain syndromes. As Ma, Chiravuri, Xing, (2015) observes, pain occurs in approximately 70 percent of cancer patients and about 65 percent of non-malignant disease patients. For this reason, there has been advent of various treatment to relieve the patients of this pain. The various treatments for acute pain include use of morphine, aspirin, and paracetamol or acetaminophen in the United States. Morphine is a narcotic or opioid analgesic that aids in regulating acute pain. Morphine, being very addictive should be taken in small quantities and only as prescribed by the doctor. However, those with asthma, breathing problems or have had a blockage in their intestine or stomach are advised never to take morphine as it could stop or slow down ones breathing. Morphine could be taken orally, rectally or via injection which has an instant effect thus inducing pain. Generally, it takes an average of fifteen to sixty minutes for the effects of morphine to occur. This opioid could be used to help in severe arthritis and lower back pains. Conclusively, morphine can work for everyone as a pain reliever but differently depending on dosage. People who have a high tolerance for opioid will take higher amounts compared to the one with a lower tolerance. However, Price, (2013) advises that the use of morphine for most cases should be the last option as there are much more and simpler methods to relieve pain. Again, the use of morphine has very adverse side effects which include vomiting, sedation, nausea, constipation and urinary retention. References Lewis, T. (2010). Sensory systems: Types of pain. Pain., 33-48. doi:10.1037/13987-003 Ma, L., Chiravuri, S., Xing, Z. (2015). Perioperative Pain Control in Patients Receiving Intrathecal Morphine Infusion for Chronic Pain: Does it Matter how we do it?Journal of Pain Relief,04(06). doi:10.4172/2167-0846.1000213 Neuromodulators. (2011).Encyclopedia of Clinical Neuropsychology,1755-1755. doi:10.1007/978-0-387-79948-3_5009 Neuromodulators For Pain Management In Rheumatoid Arthritis. (2012).Journal of Pain Palliative Care Pharmacotherapy,26(2), 172-172. doi:10.3109/15360288.2012.687948 Paice, J. A. (2007). Supplement: Advances in Opioid Management: Evaluation and Treatment of Persistent Pain Disorders. Pain Management Nursing, 8(3). doi:10.1016/j.pmn.2007.07.004 Price, D. D. (2013). First and Second Pain Assessment (First Pain, Pricking Pain, Pin-Prick Pain, Second Pain, Burning Pain).Encyclopedia of Pain,1288-1293. doi:10.1007/978-3-642- 28753-4_1509

What we believe and value, how we behave and how w Essays

What we believe and value, how we behave and how we view ourselves and others are all strongly influenced by the culture in which we live. One culture's normal values, may seem weird or even offensive by another culture. A good example of a universal value that is viewed diffefrently by different cultures around the world, is Marriage. Some cultures in South Asia, and Africa believe and practice arranged or forced marriages. In parts of India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan there are marriages that take place solely to improve economic and social status. Had I been born there, my beliefs might be different. Here in the U.S. of America, we tipically marry for love, life long companionship, and children. Being of mainstream North American culture, I personally view marriage as a sacred vow between a man and woman under God. I don't support divorce, but more I find these days with the young generations(mine included) divorce is common. I've not married yet, but I was once engaged. It's always when you're in a committed relationship that hot women want to be social. Out of loyalty, honesty, respect, and faith, I had to refuse in a few tempting encounters. The divorce rate is higher than it was in the past here in the U.S. based on what I hear from the media. Why is that? Could it be that other cultures have influenced the newer generations to view marriage differently? I do not know the specifics, but I do know this country has had marriage law changes in the past. During my Grandfather's generation, it was socially unacceptable and illegal for interracial marriages to take place. Today, the laws have changed again allowing same sex marriage recognized legally.