Note about this final week:

I’ll be in the Zoom room Monday 6-8, but I’m moving Tuesday and probably won’t be able to meet on Tuesday. If anyone wants to have a Zoom meeting, I’ll probably at least be available via my phone Tuesday evening.

About assignments: I’m going to do my best to get everything caught up tomorrow (Monday June 28). Can’t wait to see your projects! You can post links to the sites on Slack if you’d like, or put the link on a Google Doc in our Google Folder. Let me know if you’re having trouble.

Good luck this week!

Website examples

Eric asked for some examples and I found these four which are various degrees of ok. They’re all built on OpenLab as Projects:

  1. This one from Professor Ellis’ class looks pretty good and has everything, mostly because they used links on their home page to get to the report and the presentation. But it’s all there. https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/eng2575-report-ghg-emission/
  2. Here’s another one from Professor Ellis’s class last year. It doesn’t have the presentation on it, however. https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/groups/eng2575-team-3-collaboration-site-2021/
  3. This one has the presentation, but not the research report, and it’s very thin on content. I only put this up to show you what it could look like in general: https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/groups/cyber-security-behind-virtualization/
  4. This next one is set up as a project but they only have a single page, so don’t be fooled. What they did was create a home page and then added links to the other materials. Not great as a website, but it has all the elements, and this is certainly one way to go: https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/phishingattacksincybersecurity/

How you organize yours is really up to you (Professor Ellis had very specific things he wanted), but here’s a simple list of components, each of which would be a page/menu item:

  • Home page with the overview and presentation (although you could do a separate page with just the presentation if you want, depending on how long your overview is).
  • Technical Report page.
  • About page with everyone’s bio.
  • And then however many other pages you want depending on how much information you think you need to lay out on the site. My own feeling is that setting up a whole page that only has one sentence on it is a waste of your time.

Info for 6/21

Here’s a quick reminder that the Zoom room is open from 6-8 tonight (it’s a Pinned message, which you’ll find if you click on the little pushpin at the top of the Announcements window).

I’ve also just finished the 750-word expanded definitions that are in the Drive as of noon.

And I added things to the Week Five Weekly Course Work, all about presentations — including audio. One person needs to narrate your PowerPoint or Canva presentation (or whatever you’re using) since we’re not all standing up in front a room or having a synchronous meeting.

One other thing: don’t forget your team does need to make a website of some kind for your project and proposal: a place to house the technical report and the presentation. In the Google Drive –> Zoom recordings folder, there’s a recording of our meeting a couple of weeks ago where I started walking through how to create a website using OpenLab’s Project. Check it out if you want to, or go to OpenLab Help on the top, and find how to create a course, project, or portfolio, and you’ll find more information there.

Just as a reminder… and yes, it says Cover Page, but not really necessary for this class since it’s going to be housed on the website rather than being sent to a potential client/customer or your boss.

Teams update

Just wanted to be sure we have the right people in the right places. Let me know if something’s gone wrong.

  1. Team password – Eric, Quincy, Christopher, Shibin, Vasyl
  2. Team vpn – Yemisi, Ledjon, MD, Melissa, Tomas, Mohi
  3. Team ransomware – Ibrahim, Vincent, Chiss, Rakib, Francis
  4. Team blockchain – Haifeng, Samiaya, Stephin, Mohammed, Justin

Week of 6/8-6/14

I think we have all the teams in place. Whew! That was hard to do when we don’t have a set required meeting time.

I walked a few people through how to set up a Project website using OpenLab in the optional meeting on 6/8; the recording is in the Google Drive in the Zoom recording folder (I hope).

As for the work this week:

The 500-word article summary is due tomorrow 6/9 unless you’re new to a team. The folder disappeared from the Drive momentarily for reasons I can’t figure out, but it’s back. I’ll start leaving feedback as soon as drafts are posted.

The Weekly Unit is for Week Three, and the video lecture (which is also on Perusall) covers the 750-word Expanded Definition. There’s also a template and explanation for it.

The Instruction Manual is also ready to be viewed. There’s a video lecture (where you’ll learn how not to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches) that talks about how to do the IM as well as some information on more current IM practices. Lots of links to examples. And I encourage y’all to use Canva if the mood strikes you.

Other than that, keep going! And stay in touch with me. Open Zoom sessions again next Monday 6-8 and Tuesday at noon.

Reminders !!!

1) Don’t forget to do the Perusall assignment (it’s called “Thinking & Writing about Audience.” 2) Post a private OpenLab post by EOD Monday (make visibility Private rather than Public) just to let me know what’s going on… and to vent. And 3) I’m opening the Zoom link tomorrow (Monday) from 6-8pm for people who couldn’t come last Tuesday, and for anyone else who wants to ask me questions.

Post initial meet-up

Wow! That went fast. First days are so very odd. But I think we’ll be having some interesting team projects. As of now they’re going to be 1) password protection, 2) VPN technology, 3) blockchain technology, 4) identity theft, and 5) crypto-ransomware-bots. More soon!

About the Zoom recordings… OpenLab won’t let me upload them here, so I put them on the Google Drive in their own folder labeled “Zoom Recordings.”

One more thing about Office Hours: I’m changing my office hours to T 1-2 (right after the meet-up) and Monday 6-8 pm. That will cover anyone who works during the day and can’t make it to the Tuesday meet-up, as well as give everyone a chance to drop in on the last “day of the week” given that we’re going from Tuesday to Tuesday.

Assignments for this week 6/1 – 6/7:

  1. Post your Introduction here on OpenLab.
  2. Go check out the Padlet and put your name on areas you’re interested in being part of a team that’s doing a project about.
  3. Some teams are going already. But I’ll start randomly assigning people to teams at the end of Wednesday 6/2 if I don’t hear from you about what project you’d like to work on.
  4. The 500-word article summary is due 6/9, topics based on what the team needs in terms of research for their technical report.

Welcome to the class (start here if you’re new)

There’s a lot of stuff on this page, but don’t panic because I’ll cover it all in the two videos I have posted. (And fyi, we’ll be having an optional class meet-up on Tuesday June 1 at noon which I’ll record and put in the Course Info area.) (Another fyi — when you post something, click on Comments under your name to see the replies.)

FYI, I’m going to be putting all the lecture videos on Perusall so that you can ask questions right as I make my attempt to explain something. To find them, go to Library on Perusall, then click on the plus sign next to folder labeled Lectures and select the lecture you’re looking for. As you’re watching, click on the “Leave Comment” button on the top right of the screen to ask me questions, answer each other’s questions if you can, join everybody else’s complaining…. I’ll respond to things quickly. I do get notifications, but you can also alert me on Slack that you’ve left a question.

First up is this short video introducing you to OpenLab and our course tools.

  • Here is a link to the Course Resources page where you can find video tutorials for creating a post in OpenLab, for joining and using Perusall, and for using Slack.
  • These are links to the other course tools you’ll need: Padlet for leaving ideas for the Team Project (I’ll explain it in the video lecture, and it’s also explained in the Week One course work tab), Perusall (when you get here, click on Register at the bottom, do the registration sign up, then use this code to Join the class/I am a student: BLAIN-UTQ9T), and the Slack invitation in case you haven’t joined already.
  • And again, here’s a link to the Doodle poll for setting up our optional class meet-ups if you haven’t filled it out yet.

Next up is the Course Overview video which I’ll also put on Perusall –> Library — +Lectures folder (leave Comments by clicking on the Leave Comment box on the top right as you’re watching the video). Below the video, you’ll find a few short docs you may want to download before you watch the video so you can have them in hand as I go over them:

  1. a general overview of this term (“The Team Project”).
  2. a list of all the tasks that you’ll be doing this term focusing specifically on the Team Project (“Scope of Tasks”).
  3. the tentative course schedule.
The Project OverviewDownload
Scope of Tasks (and notes)Download
Tentative Class ScheduleDownload

NEXT>>>

Now that you’ve watched the video, go to Weekly Course Work tab and find Week One to get the initial homework (which is an Introductions post and a trip to Perusall to look at the syllabus).

Not gonna lie… this is a very full, very busy class.

So hang on, y’all! It’s going to be interesting.

And, as always, text me on Slack if you have questions.

Quick reminder: our first optional class meet-up is Tuesday, June 1 at noon. Here’s the Zoom link. Passcode is 766936