The purpose was to give students, mostly commuters, a way to share and collaborate on projects.

When registering for Virtual-Levin, please use your CSU issued email address. You can change it to a different one after your account has been approved.

The Colectivo is a group of friends, neighborhoods and colleagues. We pool our funds and share our energy to invest it back into projects that we see as worthwhile and exciting in Cleveland. Each member contributes to the Colectivo quarterly and together we choose projects to support. Every month we gather to discuss ideas, learn about area initiatives and organizations, network with a growing circle of members, and continue building the Colectivo.

So now we are again looking for innovative ideas in which to invest. That’s where you come in!

If you have a project that you would like to make a reality, take the first step—visit www.clevelandcolectivo.org and send us your answers to these three simple questions.
Or send your answers to info@clevelandcolectivo.org.

1) What is your proposal?

2) How will this project strengthen our community?

3) What makes your project unique, and why are you the right person to do this?

We welcome individuals, new businesses, and community projects to participate. Grant amounts will range between $500 and $5,000, based on the number of projects selected.
The deadline for submissions is January 15, 2007.
Please keep your response to one page.

Bring your idea to life, and let us help!"

10/11/2006 10:33:00 AM
Posted by Cristin Frodella, Product Marketing Manager

Create picture collages of famous Americans with Picasa. Find out what Virginia newspapers had to say about the Civil War in 1862 with Google News Archive Search. Check out the pyramids in Egypt with Google Earth, and then build your own with SketchUp.

We’ve been hearing about some pretty cool assignments from classrooms across the U.S. where teachers at all grade levels are using Google products to bring history lessons to life, illuminate new sources of information, and encourage sharing and collaboration. What we’ve also heard loud and clear is that teachers want more information about using Google products, and more connections to other educators who are using the web creatively. This is why we’ve launched a set of resources for K-12 educators today at the new Google for Educators site. Here you'll find teachers’ guides for 12 Google products, including basic information about each, examples of how educators are using them, plus lesson ideas. We’re also offering some additional multimedia content, including lesson plans and videos from Discovery Education that use Google Earth and SketchUp, and a series of podcasts at Infinite Thinking Machine on innovative ways to use the web in the classroom.

So please, teachers, students, and parents -- check it out and let us know what you think. And remember, we've made it impossible to forget your homework when it’s saved safely on Google Docs & Spreadsheets.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/teachers-helper.html

A spire built to inspire
Is this the future breezing into town?
Sunday, October 01, 2006
Chris Sheridan
Plain Dealer Columnist

It seems only fitting that the man who agreed to lead a struggling urban university at age 64 would now want to put a windmill on its campus.

But when the man is Michael Schwartz and the institution Cleveland State University, Don Quixote analogies quickly crumble.

For one thing, CSU's president isn't talking about a typical three-blade structure like the one that now stands by the Great Lakes Science Center. For another, he expects it to carry far more than symbolic value; ideally, this SmartEnergy Spire eventually will blow lots of dollars directly toward CSU's bottom line.

"It's a terrific idea," he says, beaming at a desk- sized model of the device that he's kept in his office since learning about the technology.

It's also terrifically well-timed. Spiraling energy prices have spurred unprecedented interest in alternative energy options in areas across the country, and specifically in Northeast Ohio. President Bush directed millions in new money toward solar and wind power in the 2007 budget, and federal applications for wind turbines have more than doubled over the last two years. Meanwhile, Cuyahoga County's commissioners appointed a task force this summer to consider alter native energy strategies, starting with an examination of wind power.

But with only about 6 percent of the United States' land mass appropriate for construction of traditional wind turbines - typically as tall as a downtown skyscraper - opportunities are huge for those who can turn innovative designs into reliable and efficient machines. A San Diego company, for example, is plugging a model that has four spinning rotors floating roughly 15,000 feet in the air, while scholars at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Johns Hopkins University each offer unique designs to allow wind turbines to stand far out at sea.

Into this heated competition comes CSU engineering professor Majid Rashidi, a man whose passion for product design yielded three patents in just six years. When Akron-area entrepreneur Mark Cironi was looking for someone to make a vague idea reality, Cleveland experts paired him with Rashidi. The professor, whose past inventions have been on a far smaller scale - for example, a device to test for leaks in a catheter - soon was hooked by the challenge of creating an entirely new way to capture the wind.

Traditional wind turbines require huge open space. They also are costly to maintain because of the height of the gearbox and massive strain placed on it by translating the energy of giant, turning blades into significant electrical power.

Replacing one big rotor with bunches of smaller ones addressed key maintenance concerns. Still unanswered, however, was the larger question: how to persuade the wind to travel in such a way as to increase its speed?

As on the TV game show "Jeopardy," Rashidi's answer ultimately came in the form of a question: "What if I made it like a screw?"

Because the device is round, it doesn't have to turn to "chase" the wind, like a traditional windmill. Because it can be built in perfectly similar segments, transport is not nearly as complex as it is when ferrying blades that can stretch longer than a football field. Finally, because rotors sit inside the curves, blades are not as susceptible to rain and snow.

CSU has a provisional patent for Rashidi's design, and Cironi and the professor have touted it to nearly anyone who will listen - politicians, business people and, of course, university leaders. Academic institutions have been among the nation's leaders in pursuing alternative energy sources; the University of Pennsylvania, for example, gets nearly a third of its power from wind, while several Minnesota colleges have erected traditional wind turbines on their campuses. Officials at the University of Akron have explored placing multiple spires on its campus, although they'll need substantial funding to make the idea happen.

Richard Stuebi, the Cleveland Foundation's BP Fellow for Energy and Environmental Advancement, says the spire targets a new market, the urban niche. But as promising as the spire sounds in theory, the performance of an actual structure over time is what matters most to potential investors.

"It's hard to know if it's going to be a winner," Stuebi said, "but it could be a winner."

Cironi says he has sold five of the structures to a Pennsylvania customer already, but CSU will get the very first spire produced. Schwartz is confident of securing funding and already plans for the model to sport the university's green-and-white colors.

"It makes the statement," the president says, "that this technology was created at CSU."