Opportunities: Literary Arts Festival

The 39th Annual City Tech Literary Arts Festival Writing Competition Submissions are now open for the 2020 City Tech Literary Arts Festival Writing Competition! 

The deadline for the writing competition will be March 1st, 2020.  Submission Guidelines and Instructions are available on the Literary Arts Festival’s OpenLab site:   https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/literaryartsfestival/submission-guidelines/

Please also save the date for the 39th Annual City Tech Literary Arts Festival on April 2nd, 2020 from 5:30 to 7:30 at the New Academic Complex Theater at 285 Jay Street! 

Opportunities: James Burke’s Connections TV Series

James Burke is a British historian of science and technology. He wrote and starred in a several documentary television series that shared his research with a general audience. One of those series is called Connections. It explores how much of the modern world’s culture and technology are interconnected and interdependent. While the show is a little dated, its overarching message is worth learning and thinking about. This first episode looks at the New York City blackout of 1965. You can view it here on Archive.org.

Opportunity: Note Taking Workshop, Oct. 10, 1:00pm, Namm 601A

This note taking workshop is highly recommended. Good note taking can make all the difference in your academic success. Details are below.

Good note taking can help students perform better on assignments and tests. It can also lead to a deeper and more complete understanding of course material. In this workshop designed especially for students, we review and practice some theories on note taking as well as introduce a proven, successful method for note taking (the “Cornell method”).

Thursday, October 10, 1:00 PM, Namm 601A No RSVP necessary Questions: Rebecca Mazumdar rmazumdar@citytech.cuny.edu or Samar ElHitti selhitti@citytech.cuny.edu

Opportunity: Learning with Lynda.com

As I’ve mentioned to some of you in class before, the New York Public Library offers free access to Lynda.com, the online video-based learning platform, for members with a library card. Using your library card number and PIN (you might need to visit a branch library to set this up if you haven’t already done so), you can login to Lynda.com from this page: https://www.nypl.org/collections/articles-databases/lyndacom.

Lynda.com teaches you how to take notes, study for classes, perform research, become a professional photographer or videographer, how to use high end software that we have on lab computers, how to use Microsoft Office or Google Docs, how to program computers, etc. All of the videos are high quality and they encourage you to learn at your own pace. As I said with the free New York Times subscription, you really ought to take advantage of these learning and staying up to date opportunities while they are available to you.

Opportunity: City Tech Writer

citytechwriter

Another excellent opportunity to get your writing recognized is City Tech Writer, an annual publication that highlights the writing of City Tech students. As I’ve said before, getting awards or publications is like “pics or it didn’t happen” for your resume–it gives strong evidence for your vital communication skills. The deadline for submission is Nov. 15. Details are below:

Please submit excellent student writing (from any discipline) to City Tech Writer, Vol. 15, by uploading a Word document or PDF at openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/citytechwriter.

The deadline for submissions is November 15, 2019.

STEM disciplines are especially encouraged to submit!

Please see the attached flyer for more information.

Opportunity: Constitution Day

The Constitution defines the system of government of the United States.  But why is this founding document arranged the way it is?  And can the Constitution help us meet the complex challenges facing us in the 21st century?  Come join faculty from the Legal Studies and Social Science departments as we discuss these important issues at our annual Celebration of the Constitution!

Date:  Thursday, September 26, 2019

Time: 1:00pm-2:15pm

Location:  Namm Hall Room 616

For more information, please contact:

Prof. Gail Williams at GWilliams@citytech.cuny.edu or

Prof. Marco Castillo at MCastillo@citytech.cuny.edu

Free Digital Subscription to The New York Times for City Tech Students

To be engaged citizens and informed professionals, we should all keep up with the news on the local, national, and global levels. To that end, City Tech offers a free digital subscription to the newspaper of record for the United States: The New York Times. Follow this link and register for your free one-year subscription with your City Tech email address.

Opportunities: Invitations to Write

As I mentioned in class last week, I started my professional blog at dynamicsubspace.net to help myself improve as a writer. I had read research that showed the more writing that you do, the better your writing becomes automatically. While I could have opted to take more writing classes, taking ownership of my goals and taking intentional action put me in the driver’s seat of improving my writing skills.

Also, writing regularly is a good reflective practice. It gives you time and cognition to think about things you’ve learned, things you’ve experienced, and things that you would like to do in the future. It helps you remember things through the cognitive processes involved.

It is with those things in mind that I wanted to invite you all to write more outside of class in fun and meaningful ways to help you improve in parallel with the things that we are doing in the classroom.

A fun writing activity that I enjoy is sending postcards. My wife and I are members of postcrossing.com. It is an online service that gives your address to other members who send postcards to you while you are given the addresses of different members, who you send postcards to. You can write about anything that you want in your postcards, but some members help you out by asking you to tell them a story or a joke or a secret, etc. The service is free, but you have to purchase your own postcards and stamps.

A free writing activity is blogging. You can easily and quickly create your own blog on wordpress.com or blogger.com. To help you think about what to write about, here are some lists of writing prompts to get you started:

Finally, Freelancewriting.com has a comprehensive list of general writing contests. Writing to a contest prompt or sending work that you have already written might yield a big dividend. However, I would warn you away from contests with entry fees, and I would recommend that you always perform due diligence to investigate the contest and who is offering it.