Need to get caught up with the latest high-tech gadgets and electronic wonders?
Just head to the nearest college dormitory for an ad-hoc course in innovative back-to-school must-haves.
In today’s college dorm rooms, mobility is modern and plugs are passé. Think mini fridges with adapters that plug into a car, lamps with grounded AC outlets and USB power ports, and tablet PCs that allow students to handwrite notes on the screen.
Can’t remember what to buy at the grocery store? Networked refrigerators now allow students who empty out milk cartons to scan the bar code, then receive an e-mailed shopping-list reminder.
Experts say teens and young adults are always early adopters of new technology and are quick to integrate high-tech tools into daily life. So you’d be hard-pressed to find a high school or college student who doesn’t have an iPod or some other MP3 player, a cellphone and a laptop computer.
But now the ante has been upped with stereo ports, power squids, Bluetooth-enabled devices, wireless routers, LCD projectors, external hard drives and flat-panel HDTVs.
And because all work and no play make for a very dull dorm room, interactive gaming units such as the Wii are getting couch potatoes up and moving, according to Shawn Malayter, spokesperson for DePaul University in Chicago.
“If you haven’t been on a college campus lately, travel around to one, because it’s really different,” adds Julie Weber, director of housing and resident life at New Mexico State University. There, all new dorm rooms boast wireless Internet access.
Today’s students come from homes with high-speed Internet. So they expect campuses to have the same or better electronic infrastructure.
New Mexico State is one of several campuses across the country that have been forced to keep up with the demands of the wireless age. Hundreds of thousands of dollars have been invested to revamp 50-year-old buildings to include multiple electrical outlets where only a few used to be sufficient. Students are now playing games on their Xbox 360s, doing homework on their computers, chatting on the Internet and text-messaging on their cellphones all at the same time.
At Creighton University in Omaha, the network was built to accommodate research, academics, classroom tasks and patient care at the campus medical center during the day, says Brian Young, vice president of information technology. But in the evenings, the networking tool uses “bandwidth shaping” to ramp up the system. That prevents the bottlenecking that can slow down the network once students get home from classes.
“In the high-tech dorm room,” Young says, “universities really have to be ready for the sheer number of devices students are bringing with them.”
Staff writer Sheba R. Wheeler can be reached at 303-954-1283 or swheeler@denverpost.com.
