"Environmental issues often span long periods of time, far-flung areas, and labyrinthine layers of complexity. In Greening through IT, Bill Tomlinson investigates how the tools and techniques of information technology (IT) can help us tackle environmental problems at such vast scales. Tomlinson describes theoretical, technological, and social aspects of a growing interdisciplinary approach to sustain ability, "Green IT," offering both a human-centered framework for understanding Green IT systems and specific examples and case studies of Green IT in action." "Tomlinson contrasts the broad ranges of time, space, and complexity against which environmental concerns play out with the relatively narrow horizons of human understanding; it's hard for us to grasp thousand-year projections of global climatic disruption or our stake in melting icecaps thousands of miles away. IT can bridge the gap between human scales of understanding and environmental scales." "Tomlinson offers many examples of efforts toward sustainability supported by IT - from fishers in India who maximized the sales potential of their catch by coordinating their activities with mobile phones to the installation of smart meters that optimize electricity use in California households - and discusses three detailed studies of specific research projects that he and his colleagues have undertaken: EcoRaft, an interactive museum exhibit to help children learn principles of restoration ecology; Trackulous, a set of Web-based tools with which people can chart their own environmental behavior; and GreenScanner, an online system that provides access to environmental-impact reports about consumer products. Taken together, these examples illustrate the significant environmental benefits that innovations in information technology can enable."--BOOK JACKET.

"In Education Nation author Milton Chen draws from extensive experience in media--from his work on Sesame Street in its nascent years to his current role as executive director of the George Lucas Educational Foundation--to support his vision for a new world of learning. Presented in five parts and divided into "module" chapters, this book examines the ways in which K-12 learning can be revolutionized through innovative reform and the use of technology. Due in large part to new technologies, over the last few decades we've witnessed a huge shift in how we imagine teaching and learning. A good example is the educational revolution sparked by Sesame Street--which in its first season had a goal of teaching preschool-age children the numbers 1 to 10. At the time, experts dismissed it as an unrealistic goal since many kindergarten students were having trouble mastering this simple counting. Yet the research proved that preschool-age children learned those skills and many others directly from the TV screen. Now Sesame Street's curriculum teaches the numbers from 1 to 40. In today's digital age the number of new ways to teach and learn is ever-expanding and includes: television, Google, YouTube, TeacherTube, Facebook, iPhones, video games, GPS devices, open source textbooks, interactive whiteboards; and there are countless examples of ways technology positively impacts student learning--from voice-recognition software that helps children learn to read to translation tools that help teachers communicate with non-English speaking parents. As a result of constant innovation, learning is no longer limited by traditional confines and we're quickly moving beyond students tied to their chairs, desks, and textbooks--and teachers locked away in classrooms."--