Summer greetings from the OpenLab and congratulations to all on the closing of another semester! A special congratulations to the class of 2021!
While our weekly “Spotlight” blog series will go on hiatus for the summer, we wanted to remind you of the sites we featured this past semester, and encourage you to check them out if you haven’t already done so.
In addition to reviewing these posts from this past spring, you can find a full curated list of all sites that have been spotlighted in our Spotlight Archive. This archive offers visitors 3 curated lists to help them sort through the posts:
For everyone (By type of site – course, project, club, portfolio)
The OpenLab Community Team will continue to offer email support over the summer– please contact us with questions or concerns.
We will also soon announce our summer programming, including one-on-one office hours. We will be in touch as we get more events and workshops on our calendar!
This week we spotlight the City Tech Astronomy Club, which allows students to come together to explore the universe, even in a remote semester. Students in the club can use “Slooh.com” to access “online remote controlled telescopes located around the world.” Members can “conduct and participate in live observation observation sessions through a web browser interface,” and “look at remote galaxies, dying and exploding stars, dark spots on the sun’s surface, rings around Saturn and craters and mountains on the Moon.”Â
Interested in learning more about the club? You can visit the club site to find out more! The City Tech Astronomy Club leaders have made information readily available for you by featuring a video on the evolution of telescopes and their current use in slooh.com, as well as a slideshow to teach you more about slooh.
Header image for Heathcare ethics, two healthcare workers in the operating room.
This week, we spotlight Professor Rob MacDougall’s philosophy course, Healthcare Ethics. The timely course examines “major ethical theories of what is morally right and wrong, and the meaning of moral concepts (e.g., the concepts of right and duty). Focus is on ethical problems associated with the practice of medicine and biomedical research.” The course builds from the OpenLab OER template, using a clean, intuitive design that facilitates ongoing communication with students. It also shows how the OpenLab can be used in conjunction with other platforms (e.g. YouTube, Blackboard). Here are some highlights from the course:
A simple, sparse main menu that includes tabs for the Syllabus,Lecture Materials, and Assignments. We especially like that the syllabus is broken up into smaller parts: course policies on the one hand, and course readings and schedule on the other. This shortens the text contained on a single page and makes vital information more digestible and find-able!
A sidebar widget that directs students to the City Tech writing center. This is a great use of the sidebar widget space. Often, faculty opt to have a full page of additional resources that students can consult, including the Student Help Desk, the library, etc. But if you have a writing-intensive course and know your students will benefit from writing help, it can’t hurt to highlight the writing center in a widget, thus making it more visible.
Sidebar text widget that reads “visit the City Tech Writing Center for help with writing.”
A home page with regular announcements. Professor MacDougall makes sure to remind students when assignments are due, when they have been graded, when synchronous course is cancelled, etc. Remember that you can set your site’s email notifications to have your students receive a message when a new announcement is made.
Linking directly to turnitin.com in blog posts announcing that papers have been graded. For faculty who use turnitin or Blackboard to collect assignments, this is a good option. Working across platforms is necessary these days, but regularly linking out to these other platforms from your OpenLab site makes navigating back-and-forth easier for your students!
Using short YouTube videos for lectures and guest lectures (for example, here). As always, we recommend giving your students ample opportunities for this type of asynchronous learning.
Healthcare Ethics is a thoughtfully designed course, kept current and engaging throughout the semester. Keep the link around as a model of an easy-to-navigate, effective site!
OpenLab friends at BWRC, the Brooklyn Waterfront Research Center, are excited to invite everyone to join them at their annual conference! “Science, Art, and the Climate Crisis Along the Brooklyn Waterfront” starts on Thursday, May 6th, at 6:30, and with two sessions on Friday, May 7th starting at 9am.
Didn’t have a chance to register? Find the event live here.
About this event
The Brooklyn Waterfront Research Center announces its 2021 Annual Conference as the crisis of climate change reaches all corners of the globe — including the Brooklyn waterfront.
Early observations of the changes in the climate that have led to our current climate crisis were made by scientists; however, it has not been scientists alone who have addressed this crisis.
This year’s BWRC conference will explore the interdisciplinary ferment created by scientists, artists, activists, and others whose work grapples with our rapidly changing climate.
Bringing together a diverse array of scientists, artists and community members, we will discuss and learn from the integration of artistic practice and scientific inquiry as a method of addressing the climate crisis globally and locally along the Brooklyn waterfront.
Welcome, Roundtable Discussion, and Virtual Exhibit Tour
Reginald Blake (Moderator), Interim Associate Provost, Dean of Curriculum; Research and Co-Director, Center for Remote Sensing and Earth System Sciences, New York City College of Technology
Jeannine Bardo, Artist, Founder / Artistic Director, Stand4 Gallery; Co-Founder / Co-Director, BioBAT Art Space
Klaus Jacob, Geophysicist, Emeritus Research Professor, Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
Mary Mattingly, Visual Artist
Nathan Kensinger, Brooklyn-Based Photographer, Filmmaker, Artist, and Curator
Session #1: Learning at the Intersection
Focusing on educational initiatives along the Brooklyn Waterfront, this session will feature community-based organizations that use innovative, interdisciplinary, and place-based approaches across the arts and sciences to better understand and address climate change.
Isa Del Bello, Education Director, Environmental Education Center, Brooklyn Bridge Park
Jasmin Alim, Education Manager, Genspace
Session #2: Working at the Intersection
Bringing together artists working in relationship to science, technology, and the environment, this session will highlight the creative integration of artistic practice and scientific inquiry as a method of making visible and addressing the climate crisis in new ways.
Speakers:
Katherine Gressel (Moderator), Contemporary Curator, Old Stone House & Washington Park; Artist, Writer.
Anna Lise Jensen, Artist; Co-Founder, Bike South Brooklyn
Simone Johnson, Interdisciplinary artist, researcher and cultural worker
Yuliya Parshina-Kottas, Designer, Researcher, Storyteller; Illustrator, The New York Times
The BWRC has a project profile on the OpenLab so you can join their project and follow along with their updates. Their website is actually on the CUNY Academic Commons, the OpenLab’s sibling platform that’s for everyone at CUNY to use. So the BWRC are visible both here and in the larger CUNY landscape–or seascape? You can find helpful information there, including their previous annual conference information.
— Brooklyn Waterfront Research Center (@bklynwaterfront) May 6, 2021
BWRC also communicates a lot via Twitter–if you don’t follow @BklynWaterfront, now you can! They often mention @CityTechOpenLab in their tweets, so you might have noticed them if you already follow us. Feel free to live-tweet the event!
You’ve probably noticed a project popping up on the OpenLab this semester, Celebrating the Life and Work of Gordon Parks: A COMD Student Group Art Show. This project works within the college-wide Gen Ed Theme, CONNECTED. In an effort to keep City Tech connected, COMD invites all of us to a celebration of the life and work of the photographer, author, filmmaker, designer, and activist, Gordon Parks.
The curated show, led by Grace Gallery Director Professor Sara GĂłmez Woolley, launched officially on April 15, with some impressive artwork in a variety of media from students in the Communication Design (COMD) department. All of the work connects Gordon Parks’s powerful artwork and words to the powerful weapons–to use Gordon Parks’s term–that COMD students have used to express themselves and their vision.
The show will remain up throughout the semester and beyond, so there’s plenty of time to explore all of the great student contributions.
This week, there are two exciting Celebrating the Life and Work of Gordon Parks events:
Faculty Face Off: 4/29/21
Panel Discussion & Honors Reveal: 4/29/21
Thursday, April 29th, 12:30-2PM (Club Hours) – Faculty Face-Off
The Faculty Face Off will be a live event during club hours. It is part of a series spearheaded by Professors Josh Kapusinski and David Prusko. In the past, it was a live on campus event meant to build student engagement and departmental morale. Faculty were pitted against each other in a live design challenge in front of a screaming crowd of students. REALLY FUN! Now it’s online, and will be a great way to keep students and faculty connected and build excitement about the show.
Professors go up against each other in a creative timed design challenge themed around the philosophies and work of Gordon Parks. Students choose the best work! Come root for your favorite professor! The details will not be revealed until the challenge date. DRAMA!
Watch the live stream from the COMD YouTube channel:
To participate in the chat or heckling, login to your Gmail account.
Thursday, April 29th, 5:30-7PM – Gordon Parks Panel Discussion
Hosted by Professor George Larkins: The Life and Works of Gordon Parks
Watch the live stream from the COMD YouTube channel:
A Choice of Weapons, a panel discussion on the life, work, and impact of Gordon Parks. This is the culminating event of the COMD department-wide celebration of the life and work of this visionary creator.
Moderated by COMD Professor George Larkins, with Featured Panelists:
Dr. Marcyliena Morgan, Executive Director of the Hiphop Archive & Research Institute at Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African & African American Research
Dr. Dionne M. Bennett, Assistant Professor, African American Studies Department, New York City College of Technology
Michal Raz Russo, Project Director, Gordon Parks Foundation
All voices welcome! The event organizers invite you to contribute to this panel discussion – login to your Gmail account to ask a question, share a comment, etc. For more info contact Professor George Larkins glarkins@citytech.cuny.edu.
What do you plan to do for Earth Day? It’s this Thursday, April 22nd, 9:30am-5:00pm. Hopefully your answer is City Tech’s Sixth Annual EcoFest!
EcoFest is an annual college-wide event & Earth Day celebration providing a public forum for students, staff, faculty and guest speakers to share their ideas about City Tech and sustainability organized by the CityTech Sustainability Council.
The EcoFest site on the OpenLab is a project that has information about these different aspects of the Earth Day celebration: the full day of interesting panels and presentations of student work related to this year’s EcoFest theme of #RespectRestoreReflect.
Check out the Schedule and Speakers for the opening welcome and six sessions–including a 1pm Green Jam to watch student videos!
You can learn about the different opportunities to participate:
take a survey about what environmental issues matter to you
You probably also noticed EcoFest in your email, on other sites on the OpenLab, and on Twitter–#EcoFest and #RespectRestoreReflect. Share your ideas here in the comments, on Twitter (with those hashtags!), and in other places you express yourself!
On March 15 and April 15, 2021 we released versions 1.7.49 and 1.7.50 of the OpenLab. They were both small releases, which included some changes to the OpenLab Attributions plugin, a few minor plugin and theme updates, and a small bug fix.Â
OpenLab Attribution Plugin
We changed a few of the labels to make them more clear. In addition, we changed “Derivative Work” to “Adapted From” and under “Adapted From” added three additional items: Item Title, Author Name, and License.
Bug Fix
In My Profile > My Settings > Email Notifications there was a duplicate section for “Individual Group Email Settings,” which we removed.
This year’s Literary Arts Festival–the 40th annual installation of this City Tech institution–will no doubt be different than the previous 39, but certainly exciting and enriching as always.
We’re spotlighting both the festival itself–now virtual via Zoom–and the revamped call for student submissions. The organizers of the Literary Arts Festival emphasize that “Your Voice Matters. Your Story Matters. You Matter and We Care.” Instead of a writing competition, the call asks students to share stories with the City Tech community. The focus is on “quarantine, hardship, loss, resilience, social activism, remote education, mental health, essential workers, health care workers, caregivers” and can include “personal essay, poem, song, photography, illustration, video/animation, dance, spoken word performance”–so any format of creative work. Submit your work by March 17th.
Then check out–and share!–this awesome poster for the event, designed by Or Szyflingier in COMD! It has information for you to save the date for the event: on Tuesday, April 13, at 5:00pm, the City Tech community will gather for a Literary Arts Festival featuring spoken word artist Staceyann Chin and City Tech students from among those submitting their work for the call for submissions.
Thanks to the Student Government Association President Ngozi Okonkwo and the SGA Team for hosting, and for their work with English Department faculty, led by Dr. Caroline Hellman, in organizing and supporting this year’s festival.
You can learn more about the latest OpenLab News, including the most recent updates to the OpenLab. For example, if you’re using the block editor to write posts and pages, you’ll be glad to know that the tool bar is now much easier to use!
PLAN Week is underway! You can learn more about the opportunities for students on the PLAN Week page of the City Tech Guide on the OpenLab.
The OpenLab, City Tech’s open digital platform for teaching, learning, and collaboration, offers virtual open hours, online support, and technical and pedagogical guidance throughout the year.
On February 18, 2021 we released version 1.7.49 of the OpenLab. It was a very small release, which included one new plugin and a few small bug fixes.Â
The new plugin is called Block Navigation, and adds a sidebar panel to the Block editor that shows an outline of all the blocks on the page or post. It provides an easy way to view the order and reorganize blocks.
We added a missing “required” label for the “account type” dropdown on the sign up page. We also eliminated the “Brute Force Protection” section in the Jetpack plugin’s settings because it was causing an error.
