This week we wanted to let our new student community team introduce themselves!  Check them out below, and don’t forget to follow The Buzz for all their wonderful work.

Hello I’m Jean-Luc Antoine, I am a student majoring in Bioinformatics. The program is pretty challenging but what I particularly like about it, is that it’s a link between computer science and biology. City Tech has been my school for quite a few semesters now, so far I’ve had an agreeable experience. Further more, I’ve invested time at getting involve in clubs and other fun extracurricular activities at the school to ameliorate my experience and meet new people. The OpenLab is where I get to display one my passion which is photography. I see photography as an art enabling me to express my creative and artistic self, in the most profound and meaningful ways.

____________________

Hi, I’m Shawn Brumell. Currently a senior at City College of Technology, I’m majoring in Communication Design Management. For the last year, I’ve been working at the Queens Museum, as a Visitor Agent. Part of my job entails being a tour guide, explainer, and a researcher, who comes up with brand new ways of getting more people to attend the museum. With a passion for writing and designing, I hope to continue in a field that allows me to express both, once I graduate.

 

Hi! My name is Jessica Deng and I am currently pursuing my Bachelor’s degree in Hospitality Management. I love this program because it encompasses all things related to hospitality from food to marketing to hotels to wine and much more than you can possibly think of. I am currently working as a Marketing Associate in a commercial real estate firm, focusing primarily on social media marketing and administrative duties.

When I am not in school or work, I am working on my personal food blog – Ambitious Eats, where I share my growing passion for food or out exploring new foods and restaurants in The Big Apple. I am a food enthusiast and social media guru. I’m a lifelong resident of Brooklyn, NY. I am thrilled to be a student blogger for Openlab and look forward to sharing with you my passion and love for food.

Hi, my name is Amanda Marmol and I am currently a sophomore here at New York City College of Technology, majoring in Law and Paralegal Studies. I love the program not only because I am aspiring to becoming an attorney but I appreciate the fact that you get a “taste” of different types of laws. For example, Real Estate Law, Family Law and everyone’s favorite, Criminal Law! With your interest in certain classes it makes your decision easier for you when it comes to what kind of paralegal or maybe even attorney you will like to become. Aside from doing so much reading/studying for my classes I try to maintain a fun/social life. I enjoy blogging on Tumblr which drew my interest to becoming a blogger here on Open Lab for The Buzz. My main task is to encourage many of you to take a step out of your studies and have fun! As a law student, I am aware of how overwhelming things get throughout the semester and sometimes you just need one day to yourself to do something exciting/adventurous. This is why I post about many events and activities that can be done here in the city that most of us are unaware of. Oh, and did I mention that I actually attend most of these activities? Yes, not only will you get references to places but you will also get my opinion on it.  I’ll stop chatting now, go check out The Buzz and get to having fun!

_________________________

Hello, my name is Brianna Vasquez and I am currently a sophomore majoring in Hospitality Management at New York City College of Technology. I hope to become a pastry chef and share random stories of food with others through Citytech’s The Buzz. During my free time, I enjoy swimming, reading, watching hockey and many other hobbies. But I love baking and making people happy by way of food. I would like to think that many will be interesting in the topics of posts as well as the stories put into them. I can’t wait to read and comment everyone’s posts in the future. Happy Posting!

We have had a recent release on the OpenLab, which includes a few new features and plug-ins we think you might be interested in! Here are the important details:

_________________

PAPERCITE

We have installed the most recent version of the Papercite plug-in, which allows users to upload and display bibtex files on a page or post. You can see an example above, and find out more about the plug-in here: https://wordpress.org/plugins/papercite/

_________________

THE EVENTS CALENDAR

We have also installed a new calendar plug-in! The Events Calendar is far more robust. According to its developers: “The Events Calendar is built to work out of the box: it doesn’t use a shortcode (nor is one available). Just turn it on, configure the settings to match your needs and you’ll be making events within less than 5 minutes.”  It includes the following features (and far more):

• Rapidly create events
• Saved venues & organizers
• Calendar month view with tooltips
• List view
• Event search
• Google maps
• Widget: Upcoming events
• Events Taxonomies (Categories & Tags)
• Completely ajaxified for super smooth browsing
• Completely responsive from mobile to tablet to desktop

You can watch a video tutorial about it as well!

________________

EXPIRE STICKY POSTS

As simple as it comes. A simple plugin that allows you to set an expiration date on posts. Once a post is expired, it will no longer be sticky. Once you activate the plug-in, you’ll see the field appear at the bottom of the “publish” field.

 _______________

OPENLAB GRADE COMMENTS

Ok, this is not a new plug-in, but we have added a new feature to one of our existing plug-ins.  When you grade a post, you’ll see it appear in a “grade” column on the post page of your site, which will make end of term grading far simpler–simply search for a student name, and the grades will appear!

That’s all for this week, and as always, email us with any questions!