Check it out if you’re interested!

For the sociologist and the professor, this can really automate tasks where I would otherwise spend time working to collate into a usable form.  Essentially, you create forms to putting the responses directly into a spreadsheet.  This makes it possible not only to easily put data into tables/forms but also to easily port them into data analysis in R and potentially other stats packages.

Some uses I’m already thinking about:

• Student Surveys for the end of the semester
• Peer review forms for student presentations.
• Committee brainstorming online.
• Updating information on student advisees.
• General survey research questions, particularly pretests.  I’m not sure about the scalability of this for larger surveys (Is there a limit to the number of responses one could get?  I don’t know)

Any other ideas?  I think this could be really useful!

I’ve finally gotten a few minutes to update this site with a few new pages that have student resources on asking for recommendations and general advice about going to graduate school.

Stuff I wish I had known back when.

So far I’ve only used it for my own benefit while writing my dissertation and keeping track of what I read.  It’s got little widgets for Word and for Open Office which hook into it and allow you to put citations in text.  It even kept up with a painfully large number of citations for my diss.  Word was a much bigger pain in the butt than  Zotero was in getting everything formatted.  It’s a great tool for this but it’s SO much more than just a reference manager.

It organizes notes and helps me keep my pdfs in order.  This is no small feat given that most everything I have is in pdf format (that’s not in a book) and I regularly get pdfs and other miscellanea from interlibary loan.  Putting everything regularly into Zotero is the easiest way I know of to keep track of all these files and then find them later.

But here’s the really cool thing for a social scientist like myself.  I study a relatively new field where much of the data and information often comes via the web.  I read blogs and try to keep up with webpages and newspaper articles, online magzines, blogs, governmental documents and other clippings.  This is where Zotero is fabulous at helping me keep all this stuff.  It allows me to take web screenshots on topics that might change and turn them into citations.  It can grab any of these different types of sources and keep them which is a HUGE benefit when looking to keep track of something that shifts and changes so quickly.  I can now use my screenshots as data.  How cool is that?

Plus it’s syncable so I can have it on multiple computers and get all the notes, pdfs, screenshots if I’m at home or if I’m on campus.

They’re also starting up a new thing called Zotero groups which I am seriously considering using for my advanced seminars next semester.  There’s just something wonderful about the possibility of citation synergy among students as they do research and begin to connect with one another about their research.

I’ve recently been asked to be the faculty mentor for the ultra cool Environmental House where they try to live more sustainably by paying attention to shower times, organic foods, composting and other environmentally friendly practices.  This group was recently featured in a Philadelphia Inquirer story on what they’re up to.  Go Enviro House!  They join an increasing number of college students who are interested in the topic of changing their own personal practices (via).

Next up, getting the new BU buildings to LEED certified!

While I do think this is clever, I wonder if it would be more effective as a method of control if we could more easily watch the  data and perhaps have a sense of how our own behavior changes the numbers.  More than just translating your 20 minute commute to get a Starbucks latte (yes that’s how long it would take if I was into Starbucks latte’s) into how many trees you’ve killed if we were to see our behavior in the aggregate and in comparison to others who are “like me”.  There are some creative uses of technology towards this end.  The ones that come to mind are the Kill-A-Watt (also turned into a Tweet-A-Watt) and this clever use of LED lights in a shower to show water consumption.

But I’m sure I’m missing more of the clever ways to do this - how else are people using social norms to encourage environmentally friendly practices?

* The original article is interesting too: Noah J. Goldstein, Robert B. Cialdini, and Vladas Griskevicius. 2008. “A Room with a Viewpoint: Using Social Norms to Motivate Environmental Conservation in Hotels.” Journal of Consumer Research: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly 35:472-482. 

I’ve been a bit quiet on here, though I am feeling the urge to start posting again.  I’m excited to announce that I’ll be starting as an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Bucknell University in the fall.  I’ll be finishing up the dissertation and defending this summer, along with moving out to Pennsylvania.  And I have a trip to Japan lined up and will be starting to look at some green building trends in that country.

But for now, I’ve been working on some parts of my dissertation focused on the history of the environmental movement and I thought I’d post up a few links of really neat sites I’m finding about the history of the environmental movement.

There are a few timelines that have been really informative.  The Environmental History Timeline is a great resource with detailed listings for every decade and a fantastic list at the end of each year of the notable books which came out.  Highly reccomended.  The project is by William Kovarik.  Another more parsimonious but still useful timeline comes from EcoTopia and is the Environmental Movement Timeline.  It’s nice because it links to additional explainations (though sometimes those are a little bit lacking).

There are some really beautiful historical photos from the Library of Congress American Environmental Photographs collections.  To the left is a picture of Alberta Falls in Colorado.

I also found a Love Canal Archive at the University of Buffalo which has some neat looking archives including newspapers, photos and more.

Picture credits: American Environmental Photographs Collection, [AEP-COS10] Department of Special Collections, University of Chicago Library.

I don’t think I’m alone in suggesting that the LEED system from USGBC is the dominant one in the marketplace.  What I did find interesting in reading the study is that they seem clear that the LEED system is the one that has the most requirements, whereas in both the Green Globes and the SB Tool the checklists read as suggestions.  I’m no expert on either Green Globes or the SB Tool, but if it is true (which this would suggest) that LEED is the most stringent set of requirements, it’s pretty fascinating that the most rigorous requirements have became the norm.

My sense is that in other industries the dominant rating system is the one which is the easiest to adopt - which may not be the most stringent.  Anyone have any thoughts?

FCNL's new Green Building

The Quaker lobby known as the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) has built a new LEED Silver building in Washington D.C.  It looks like a beautiful building complete with green roof, light scoop and geothermal heating and cooling.

What I find most interesting about the construction of this building is the intersection between faith and sustainability in the design.  On their website is some information about environmental sustainability as an extension of the quaker testimony on simplicity.  Quakerism has a long history of simplicity in architecture and intentional use of space.  While many of my respondents talked about space in a thoughtful way, I found that for the religious groups the use of space took on a spiritual dimension and a way of enacting religious beliefs in practice.

I’m hoping to write some more about the intersection of faith and architecture in terms of sustainability, though it will likely occupy only a small section of my dissertation.  Still there is such a clear connection between faith and sustainability which is growing to be seen in the architectural decisions these spiritual communtities make.

One of the perks of my dissertation is that I get to see really neat buildings where creative people have put a lot of thought into the way the building is constructed.  The picture above is from one building I visited where there are whiteboards for walls and students are invited to write on them.  Sometimes this ends up being coursework such as equations or problem sets.  But when wandering around in the hallways I found this and just had to snap a picture.

Do you think a building can love you?  Are places friendly or loving?  Is it a more meaningful building or place to be if it’s sustainable or eco friendly?  Does it love you more if it let’s you write on it’s walls?

I’m writing this blog to put down some of the ideas and thoughts that come from my dissertation as I’m writing it.  There’s a lot of interesting things that I’m writing about (at least I think so) and I’d like to have a venue for some of my research to be out in the “real world”.  I’ll also post things that I run across that might be useful or potentially relevant for other people who do research on sustainability, who are interested in sustainable building practices or who might just want to know what’s up.

So stay tuned for some data, some neat graphics, some good stories and a whole lotta buildings that love you.