The Open Road

In The Spotlight: #The Guide

#TheGuide, a project from Professors Karen Goodlad and Laura Westengard, is a one-stop shop for tips, tricks, and advice about our CityTech campus and surrounding neighborhood. With posts from students about local wine, local businesses, and local attractions, it has everything a newcomer – or a CityTech veteran – would want to get oriented to the community. Check out their extensive list of dining options, their profile of CityTech amenities, and their advice for college survival, including time management and intellectual openness. And stay tuned for updates! Students will be adding even more to #TheGuide in coming weeks.

In the Spotlight: ARTH1112 – Introduction to Film-Hybrid

In Prof. Sandra Cheng’s ARTH1112 – Introduction to Film-Hybrid, students blog and comment about the films they watch. Check out their thoughts on Pirates of the Caribbean, Reservoir Dogs, and the 1978 version of Superman. For extra credit, they get to visit MoMA or the Museum of the Moving Image. And in case you need any movie recommendations over the holidays, look to the course home page for Prof. Cheng’s comments on the films they’re watching for class.

In the Spotlight: COMD3523 – Storyboard Concepts

A class like COMD3523 – Storyboard Concepts feels like it was made to exist on the OpenLab. As students go about exploring visual storytelling in Prof. Davis’s section, they access the course site for readings, assignments, storyboard templates, and weekly recaps of lessons, complete with images, videos, and graphics. Check out the site to see what students have been up to in class, including learning to stage a set’s lighting by modeling for each other!

In the Spotlight: ECON2505 – Environmental Economics

For ECON2505 – Environmental Economics, Profs. Diana Mincyte and Sean MacDonald have built a course site featuring reading assignments, exam materials, PowerPoint presentations, and extra credit options. You can see here, for example, their detailed instructions for a research project that their students will do. Students in the class also write weekly posts in response to their readings. And they’ll be able to use the site to post their final presentations and review each other’s work. See the site here for more!

In the Spotlight: Our Places: How We Commemorate

In Our Places: How We Commemorate, students in Prof. Mary Sue Donsky’s course LAW 2301 Estates, Trusts and Wills, a research class, explore memorial sites of the deceased. Taking their legal study out of the classroom, they research and photograph these sites, taking a close look at the ways that we commemorate the dead. Then they share their learning and reflections with each other. Examples include memorials for celebrated baseball player Tony Gwynn, for the actress Anita Ekberg, and for those lost in 9/11. Take a look to see more.

In the Spotlight: ENG1101 – College Composition I

English Composition I prepares students with the communication, research, and literacy skills that they need for their careers. For his section of the course, Professor Jason Ellis is using his OpenLab site to make course assignments more manageable for students. With each assignment he posts detailed instructions, a schedule of tasks, and a grading rubric. Students can also turn to the course site to find short writing assignments to complete in class. For fellow faculty, this site is a great example of how to use the OpenLab to clarify your assignments and expectations. Check it out!

This Week in the OpenLab: November 4th Edition

(image by Sean MacEntee via Creative Commons Liscence)

This week we wanted to run through a couple of plugins that do very specific, very useful things.

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REQUIRE POST CATEGORY

This very simple plugin can do wonders to organize a site with multiple users, just by making sure users don’t forget to pick a category. To use, it first activate the plugin:

When users forget to select a category, they’ll see a pop up reminder:

That’s it!

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EXPIRE STICKY POSTS

Again, a very simple plugin that will allow sticky posts (posts that you want to “stick” to the top of a page) to expire on their own. Once expired, they will move “down” the page in reverse chronological order like any other post. To use it, first activate the plug in:

Once you do that, you’ll see a new option appear in the “publish” section of your dashboard. Enter the date or choose it from the pop-up calendar, and you’ll set it to expire!

That’s al for now! Enjoy and as always email us with any questions!

In the Spotlight: HMGT4997 – Wine of the New World

In Profs. Karen Goodlad and Robert Dagorn’s course, students are learning about the art and science of wine making, blending, and tasting. They have recently made two visits to Red Hook Winery, where they were able to take part in the wine-making process and create their own blends to pair with a particular meal. You can view photos and read their reflections on this visit and the excellent hands-on experience they gained. If you’re lucky enough to visit the Janet Lefler Dining Room at the right time, you’ll be able to taste their blends!

In the Spotlight: Biology Open Educational Resources

(Image credit)

This site, developed as a collaboration between the Library and the Biological Sciences Department and maintained by Prof. Jeremy Seto, contains many wonderfully rich Open Educational Resources (OERs) for students of biology at City Tech (and beyond!). OERs are materials for teaching and learning that are not licensed under copyright and thus able to be freely accessed and shared. (For more information, see the library’s great guide to OERs). The Biology OER contains textual and multimedia resources organized by topic, including descriptions, images, and videos of different biological processes, research tools, and class activities. Take a look and enjoy this excellent resource!

This Week in the OpenLab: October 19th Edition

Recently a few questions have come to us about the Prezi WP plug-in, which allows you to embed a Prezi presentation into a page or post. Here’s a handy guide. Much thanks to Boone Gorges for creating this, and the team over at the Cuny Academic Commons for some of the language here. As always, contact us with any questions!

To embed a Prezi presentation into a WordPress post or page, you will first need to active the Prezi WP plugin.
Then, go to the Prezi you hope to embed. You’ll see a unique short code in the URL of the Prezi. It surrounded by the box here:
Next, you’ll want to copy that shortcode into this form: [prezi id=’xxxxxxxxxx’]. Go ahead and copy that exactly if you like, replacing the xxxxxxxxx with your shortcode. As here:
If successful, your prezi should appear in your post or page like this:
If you like, the plugin also accepts optional width and height parameters: [prezi id=’hgjm18z36h75′ width=’600′ height=’450′]