A Video Game For The Environment

Can video games save the planet? Maybe, if they are in the hands of the right high school students.

The Center for New Media at the University of California, Berkeley was just awarded $238,000 for its work on an alternative reality game that stars … the environment. The game, called "Black Cloud", lets teams of high school students use data from real air quality sensors to act the part of real estate developers or environmentalists. The students, who are in high schools in Los Angeles and Cairo, must balance sites for development with sites for conservation.

Berkeley's work was recognized by HASTAC (the Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Advanced Collaboratory), in partnership with the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. But "Black Cloud" had a lot of competition: Judges sorted through more than 1,000 applications to name seven winning projects, which also included another environmentally themed entry. The Sustainable South Bronx Fab Lab, in partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, won $100,000 for a system that lets users turn digital models into real world constructions.

You can learn more about the HASTAC competition here.

Image, credit: Black Cloud development screenshot, The Center for New Media at the University of California, Berkeley

Collaborating On Sustainability

Over the last decades, many colleges and universities and universities have introduced interdisciplinary studies. Under them, students can jump across the campus to fit together the pieces of many different disciplines. At least that's how it works on paper because not every department likes to cut its majors loose.

Now, says The New York Times, that trend is creating a new interdisciplinary focus on sustainability. It cites the creation of the Golisano Institute for Sustainability at the Rochester Institute of Technology and the new Institute for a Secure and Sustainable Environment at the University of Tennessee as examples.

There's more than environmental green in all of this. The Golisano Institute is named for its billionaire backer, B. Thomas Golisano. The University of California, Berkeley's new sustainability center is funded by a $10 million grant by Dow Chemical. You can read the full Times piece here.

University, College Win Livable Building Awards

The Center for the Built Environment at the University of California, Berkeley has chosen higher education buildings to be two of the three winners of its Livable Building Awards for 2007.

Carnegie Institution for Science's Global Ecology Research Center at Stanford University won for features such as a radiant cooling system that has helped to cut carbon emissions from building operations by 72%. Its wood doors were salvaged from old wine vats and it also has an energy-efficient water system.

Also a winner: The Kirsch Center at De Anza College and part of the credit for the award definitely belongs to the Cupertino, Calif., community college's own students. De Anza's student government earmarked $180,000 of its own funds for the center, which has gotten second-highest designation from the U.S. Green Building Council.

With green building so hot a topic on college campuses these days, it's perhaps not surprising that there was also a university among the seven finalists. Donald Bren Hall at the University of California, Santa Barbara was given an honorable mention.