What You're Doing, Where We're Going
This week we’re featuring Professor Rob Ostrom’s ENG 1101 section, Not Only the Dead Know Brooklyn. Students have just posted some excellent multimedia presentations, in which each group researched a neighborhood in Brooklyn and explored the changes in that neighborhood over time. Students did a great job, and have posted their work on the course site in multiple formats including video, sound, and Prezi and PowerPoint presentations. Take a look!
City Tech’s OpenLab, an open-source digital platform for students, faculty, and staff, is looking for enthusiastic City Tech students to blog weekly. Your posts could be about you: maybe you’re from far away, a parent, coming back to school after many years, a veteran, etc. Or you could write about what interests you and your friends and classmates: music, sports, food, movies. Or you could share your photography as a photoblogger.
Whether writing or photoblogging, OpenLab Student Bloggers will work with the OpenLab Community Team to create conversation on the OpenLab, commenting on the posts by other student bloggers and members of the OpenLab community. If you’re applying for blogging as a writer, you should:
If you are applying for photoblogging, you should:
This club, for students interested in the new Biomedical Informatics major at City Tech, has a great site featuring lots of information on club and other local activities and events. It also includes resources on jobs, internships, and the field of Biomedical Informatics in general. We’re happy to see them on the OpenLab!
(image by lloydsscreenies via creative commons license)
Hope your term going swimmingly! Â We upgraded our WordPress system not too long ago and want to highlight the features of the new update for our users. Â There are plenty more features than this, particularly on the back end, and if you’re interested you can have a look here. Â What’s highlighted below are those features that will be most frequently encountered by our users.
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WORDPRESS 4.0 “Benny”
That’s all for this week. Â As always, email us anytime with your questions!
Professor Michael Krondl‘s Culinary Tourism course is, as the site tagline says, “exploring New York’s exciting food landscape,” and one of the great things about the course site is that it shares those experiences with us on the OpenLab! The class has already taken a few culinary field trips–or walking food tours–of the Flatiron, Astoria, and Williamsburg neighborhoods, during which they sampled food in each neighborhood and wrote about their experience on the course site. By the end of the semester students will be creating a culinary walking tour of their own. They’ve also been trying out a new food and blogging about it, under the “food first” category. In addition to the great interactive work students are doing, the site includes many resources for all the foodies out there in the Blogroll and Links sections in the right-hand sidebar. Check it out!
“Ways of Seeing” is a First Year Learning Community for ADGA students who are taking Professor Jenna Spevak’s Graphic Design Principles I and Professor Jody Rosen’s English Composition I courses. Students are creatively reflecting on the world around them through image and text, from New York City more generally, to local field trips, City Tech, the view from their window, and more. The course site is well-structured, making it easy to browse through the projects for both courses. Students have also created ePortfolios, which can be accessed from the course profile. Do take a look at their great work!
(image by Mushin via Wikimedia Commons)
In keeping with our recent theme, this week we’re going to highlight some clubs from around the OpenLab. Â Enjoy!
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EESL is Professor Masato R. Nakamura’s research group based on Mechanical Engineering Department in New York City College of Technology (City Tech), City University of New York (CUNY). This Lab is a research group, not a club, but opens to everyone who would like to conduct research on energy, environmental engineering (including ecodesign), and computing for sustainability. Also it’s for people who wish to obtain research and development (R&D) skills required in a high level position in the industry and academia.
Excellent students can be recommended to become research assistants in order to publish a paper as a co-author, and have an oral presentation in an international conference. These research activities make your resume strong (R&D skills, publication, professional presentation) and will be a huge advantage for finding an engineering position or being accepted or transfer to other graduate schools for obtaining master or doctoral degree.
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As the club site creators write, “The music club was created to group together City Tech students who want to exercise their musical abilities. I expect to meet with members once a week on Thursdays during club hours (12:40pm-2:00pm). Ideally the club can  give us a chance to participate in school events and perform. We also have the chance to get to know other members within the club who share similar interests in music.”
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Theatreworks, the resident theatre company at New York City College of Technology, is composed of students, alumni, faculty, staff and community members. Founded in 1974, Theatreworks has been recognized in the media and theater circles for its commitment to professionalism in performance, technology and the advancement of multicultural casting and crews in plays, videos, musicals, dance and other events. This unique approach to theatre has given Theatreworks citywide recognition and an audience from the greater New York area. Theatreworks is now performing in the state-of-the-art Voorhees Theatre, where a haunted hotel, the Gravesend Inn, has opened each October to hundreds of spectators for over 13 years. Each spring semester a resident group is hosted on campus to work with the Theatreworks students. Student technicians receive valuable training by participating in the lighting, sound, costume, video, publicity and scenery crews for performances each year. Theatreworks alumni can be found in the professional theater, in television and concert venues, and working with many theater-related companies in their respective communities. For further information about Theatreworks, call Professor Chip Scott in the Entertainment Technology Office in the Voorhees Building, room V 205, at 718.260.5590 or emailcscott@citytech.cuny.edu
That’s all for this week!
Number of users broken down by students, faculty, staff:
Students: 10438
Faculty: 538
Staff: 105
Number of courses, projects, clubs, portfolios:
Courses: 803
Projects: 1356
Clubs: 59
Portfolios: 2326
Pageviews (for past quarter):
558,093
Average visit duration (for past quarter):
5:18
Last week we highlighted OpenLab courses from this term. This week we thought we’d highlight a few project that are particularly interesting for the term. Â Enjoy!
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OFFICE OF VETERANS SUPPORT SERVICES
Created last year, the Office of Veterans Support Services’ goal is to assess, plan, and expedite the required resources for our community of veterans at City Tech.  If you’re a veteran, you can find contact information, a list of events, and more!  Visit and support this growing, important project!
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WORDS HAVE LIVES: RESOURCES FOR STUDENTS IN DEVELOPMENTAL WRITING
This site is a composition and grammar resource for students who want to write stronger papers. While topics here are produced in direct response to class discussions and interactions with students regarding specific writing concerns, they also are relevant to all students wishing to understand how to fix their own writing and gain a sense of how their writing questions are shared with others going through the same learning process.
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OUR PLACES: HOW WE COMMEMORATE
This project features the photographs and writing of students in LAW 2301 Estates, Trusts and Wills, showing the varied ways that the inhabitants of New York City commemorate decedents. What’s particularly amazing about this site is the range–from large monuments we’ve all seen to tributes to Jam Master Jay to spontaneous street corner memorials, from all over the city. Â Lovely lovely site.
That’s all for this week. Â As always, contact us with any questions!
FIRST YEAR LEARNING COMMUNITY: ”The Art of Food” HMGT1203/1204 & ARTH1100
“The Art of Food” is an exciting learning community between Professor Garcelon’s Culinary I, Professor Jacus’s Baking & Pastry I, and Professor Cheng’s History of Photography courses.  In their course, their students explore whether or not it’s possible to appreciate food like a work of art and how food can be viewed in terms of aesthetic categories like beauty and taste.  The course site is very dynamic and very well-structured with great multimedia assignments from photographing food texture to blogging about Civil War soldier’s diets and foods that would be impossible to live without!  Take a look and enjoy!
The OpenLab is an open-source, digital platform designed to support teaching and learning at City Tech (New York City College of Technology), and to promote student and faculty engagement in the intellectual and social life of the college community.
