In the Spotlight: “The Art of Food”

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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!

In The Spotlight: #TheGuide

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#TheGuide

#TheGuide project, organized by Professor Karen Goodlad in the Hospitality Management department and Professor Laura Westengard in the English department, and created by their students, offers the OpenLab community a friendly neighborhood guide to local resources ranging from information about college skills, to tours of Brooklyn Bridge Park, to where to find the best local grub! This site is very well-organized and makes good use of widgets in the right-hand sidebar. Just check out all of those great categories! This site is a great example of how collaborative work done on the OpenLab can benefit the entire City Tech community.

This Week in the OpenLab: October 2nd Edition

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(image by Olve Utne via Creative Commons License)

Happy Holidays for some of you, happy short weeks for the rest. With the term well under way, we thought we’d highlight some courses! Enjoy!

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LIB 1201 – Research and Documentation for the Information Age – Section D952 – Fall 2014

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This course, taught by Ian Beilin, explores research and documentation for all media formats including text, images, sound, and multimedia. Students will explore information issues, especially in terms of their relevance today: how information is produced and organized in both traditional and emerging media, how information access is affected by political, economic and cultural factors, and the ethics of information use. Students will also acquire the practical skills of locating information sources in a variety of media and formats, critical evaluation of sources, and documentation and citation of traditional and emerging media and technologies. Students will apply what they learn to create and present research and documentation projects.

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Ways of Seeing: Adventures with Image & Text

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This Learning Community for ADGA students taking ADV1100 & ENG1101 and taught by our own Jenna Spevak and Jody Rosen includes field trips, hands-on projects, and cross-sensory experiences to help students’ discover and express their creative vision.  Great field trips, a nice blend of writing and art, and a great first visual assignment with written student reflection!

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MEDU1010 Foundations of Math Ed, FA2014: Teaching Tomorrow’s Teachers.

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This course, taught by Andrew Parker, examines the historical, philosophical, and sociological foundations underlying the development of American educational institutions. The role of the schools, the aims of education, diverse learners, the mathematics curriculum in New York State, legal principles that affect education, and the role of state, local, and federal agencies will be emphasized.

We particularly love the”Why I Want to Be A Teacher” blog posts. Check them out here!

That’s all for this week!  Remember to contact us with any questions!

This Week in the OpenLab: September 17th Edition!

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Living Lab Event: What’s New in the Living Lab

This message comes from Sandra Chang, who runs our very own Living Lab.  Come and find out what’s been happening in the Living Lab on Friday, September 19, 2014 in Namm 119, 11:45 am-1:30 pm. The dissemination event is open to all. See what your colleagues have been doing in the Living Lab. Take a break, grab a little lunch, and even think about different approaches to your own classroom. Hope to see you there!

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NEW PLUGIN: OPENLAB GRADE COMMENTS

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As we’ve been saying over the last couple of weeks, we’ve made quite a few upgrades to the OpenLab of late. One of which is a replacement for our Grader Plug-In, called OpenLab Grade Comments.  The plug-in is very very simple to use, with far less potential confusion for users, and an easier interface for privately leaving grades only the post creator and administrator can see. Once activated, you’ll see the two options appear next to any post. Easy!

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That’s it for this week!  As always, email us with any questions!

This Week In The OpenLab: September 10th Edition!

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(image by IvanWalsh.com via Creative Commons License)

10,000!!!!!!!!!!!!

Last week the OpenLab passed a huge milestone:  10,000 members!  We’re extremely proud to have fostered this community, and thank each and every one of you for participating, teaching, learning, and sharing.

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Last week we mentioned that there were a number of updates, new features, and new bits of help on the OpenLab added or installed over the summer.  We’d like to spend the rest of this post (and probably the next–there are quite a few), pointing out a few of these.  Enjoy!

Theme Tutorials

While most of the themes on the OpenLab have the same (or very similar) functionality, we have a few themes that work quite a bit differently.  This means, in these cases, you might not be sure how they work or you might find them too complex for your use.  Fear not!  Our own Andy Mckinney has done us (and really, WordPress users everywhere) a great service by providing the clearest tutorials anywhere (we’re not kidding about that).  You can find tutorials here on the following themes:

Sliding Door

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Hero and Filter

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Member Portfolios in the Sidebar
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You can now add a list of member portfolios in the sidebar of your site.  It’s a great way for faculty to easily access student activity, particularly if the portfolio is a part of your class.  It’s also a good way for a club or project to gather and show off its membership!
You can add the desired portfolios under GROUP SETTINGS>SETTINGS.  Then you’ll be able to add the PORTFOLIO LIST widget to whichever sidebar you like.
That’s all for this week! As always, contact us with any questions!

This Week in the OpenLab–Back to School Edition!

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WELCOME BACK!

On behalf of the OpenLab, City Tech’s open-source digital platform where students, faculty, and staff can meet to learn, work, and share their ideas, we’d like to welcome you back (or welcome you) to the school year.  And welcome to The Open Road, our resource for all things OpenLab.  If you haven’t been here since the beginning of summer, you’ll find that we’ve started an overhaul of this site, simplifying our menu and the things you can find here and, we hope, creating an even more useful resource.

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WORKSHOPS!

Screen Shot 2014-09-02 at 4.02.15 PMThe OpenRoad is the place to sign up for workshops!  We have workshops throughout the fall for students, faculty and staff, on a variety of subjects.  You can sign up here, and be sure to check back here in January and in the Spring term for more updates.

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HELP!

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(image by Johnathan Nightingale via Creative Commons License)

Another change to the Open Road is actually not an addition:  We’ve moved our overview of plug-ins and widgets to the help section of the OpenLab, and you can find that here:  https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/blog/help/help-category/plugins-and-widgets/.  While you’re there, have a look around the revised, expanded help section, which now includes troublesooting, FAQs, and Best Practices entries.

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MORE TO COME!

The summer has been a busy one here at the OpenLab, with a host of new features and resources.  We’ll be highlighting them all in the next couple of weeks.  Stay tuned and, as always, contact us with any questions!

Google Docs Shortcode

Google Docs Shortcode is a small plugin for WordPress that allows you to use a shortcode to easily embed a Google Doc into your blog posts or pages.

The shortcode supports the following Google Doc formats:

  • Documents
  • Presentations
  • Spreadsheets
  • Forms

This plugin was developed for the CUNY Academic Commons. Licensed under the GPLv2 or later.

The following can also be found here:

How to Use

Embedding a document, presentation or spreadsheet

  1. First, you’ll need to find the public URL of your Google Doc. Let’s start by logging in to your Google Docs. Next, find the item you want to embed.
  2. You should now have your Google Doc open. Next, navigate to File > Publish to the Web. A dialogue box should appear, similar to the one below:
    Publish to the Web dialog window
  3. Make sure that the Automatically republish when changes are made checkbox is checked. This will allow you to make changes to your Google Docs and have these changes automatically reflected on your WordPress site.
  4. Copy the Document Link highlighted in red above. If you don’t see the “Document Link” field, click on theStart publishing button and you should be able to view the field.
  5. Now navigate to your WordPress dashboard and open up the post or page where you want to embed your document. On a new line, type the following shortcode and paste in the link you copied, above: 
    [gdoc link="THE LINK YOU COPIED" height="800"]

You can customize the shortcode by using some custom parameters mentioned below.

Embedding a form

  1. Follow step 1 above.
  2. Next, navigate to View > Live form. (If you don’t see this entry, this means you’re using an older version of Forms. You will also need to follow steps 2-3 above. Next, navigate to Form > Go to live form.) This should take you to the public version of the form. Copy the URL from your browser’s address bar.
  3. Follow step 5 above.

Other shortcode parameters

Here are some other custom parameters you can use with the shortcode:

  • “width” – By default, this tries to use your theme’s content width. If this doesn’t exist, the width is “100%”. Fill in this value to enter a custom width.
  • “height” – Enter in a custom height for your Google Doc if desired. Defaults to “300”. Avoid percentages.
  • “seamless” – This parameter is only applicable to Documents. If you enter “0”, this will show the Google Docs header and footer. Default value is “1”, which means that no Google Docs header or footer will be shown.
  • “size” – This parameter is only applicable to Presentations. You can enter in “small”, “medium” or “large” to use the presentation preset sizes. Dimensions for these presets are: small (480×389), medium (960×749), large (1440×1109). To set a custom width and height, use the “width” and “height” parameters listed above instead.

Thanks

  • Scott Voth – for testing and writing a version of this documentation on the CUNY Academic Commons codex.
  • Christopher Stein – for noting a bug about using older presentations with the plugin.

In the Spotlight: Our Places: How We Commemorate

Our Places: How We Commemorate

This project is associated with Mary Sue Donsky’s LAW 2301 course, Estates, Trusts, and Wills.  Students  researched a commemoration for someone who had died, and posted photos and descriptions of the  commemoration sites, which were located in neighborhoods all over the city.  The types of commemorations were diverse, ranging from buildings, sculptures, photographs, street signs, and murals.  The work provides a deeper look at sites we might normally just pass by each day without taking much notice.

In the Spotlight: Skateboard Filming

Skateboard Filming – Muhammad Floyd

Another site from Jennifer Sears’s Advanced Career Writing course, Muhammad Floyd’s blog is about his passion for making skating videos.  He writes helpful reviews and provides advice about equipment and software.  We especially like how he includes video reviews he has created himself.  Also be sure to check out the link included on the About page to one of his skating videos. While the blog is focused on skateboarding, the information Muhammad provides would be helpful for anyone with an interest in video, especially related to shooting sports or other kinds of action.

The OpenLab at City Tech:A place to learn, work, and share

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.

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