(image by Estrategy via Creative Commons License)

As the 2013-2014 school year comes to an end, we thought we’d take a moment to remind everyone about a few options for the end of the term. These include how to export any site on the OL, how to archive a course, project or site, and how to transfer administration of a course, club or project to a new administrator, in case the original is graduating or leaving for other reasons.   Either way, have a great summer!

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TRANSFERRING ADMINISTRATION

Basically transferring administration from one user to another involves the steps you can find here. Once a person is a member of a course, project or club, they can be promoted to admin and, if they like, remove the old administrator.

The only other step to remember is you might have to change the email associated with the site, because your site may still be affiliated with the old admin’s email address, and thus alerts will go to them, not the new admin.  You can do that under Settings>General on the dashboard of your site.

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ARCHIVING A COURSE

While we promise your work will be here for as long as you like, occasionally you might want to “save” a copy of a site on a particular day. Maybe at the end of the term, or just as you’re graduating, or if for some reason you want to “freeze” your portfolio for something like an application or tenure file. The OpenLab has a special plug-in for this, called StaticPress. You can activate it on the plug-ins page of your dashboard, and then follow the instructions you find here.

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IMPORTING/EXPORTING

If for some reason you want to move a copy of your site to another WordPress installation, you can easily do that on the OpenLab.  We’ve covered this a few times, but thought it’s always good to remind people at the end of the term.  To import or export a site, follow these instructions.

And that’s it for the year!  Have a wonderful summer and, as always, contact us with any questions!

(photo by Susan G. Lesch via Creative Commons License)

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Workshop Reminder!

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Featured Group:  Words Have Lives

This week we’re featuring a valuable group that’s a valuable resource for writers, the group Words Have Lives, which you can see here.  As its creators note, it’s “A composition and grammar source 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.”

Upcoming Event:  Literary Arts Festival 2014!

The annual City Tech Literary Arts Festival Approaches!

City Tech will host its 33rd Annual Literary Arts Festival on Thursday, April 10, 5:30 p.m., in Midway Auditorium, 240 Jay Street, Downtown Brooklyn. The poet Cornelius Eady will be this year’s guest speaker. The event is free and open to the public.

Eady is the author of seven volumes of poetry, including Kartunes (1980), Victims of the Latest Dance Craze (1985; Lamont Poetry Prize of the Academy of American Poets), BOOM, BOOM, BOOM: A Chapbook(1988), The Gathering of My Name (1992; Pulitzer Prize nominee), You Don’t Miss Your Water (1995), the autobiography of a jukebox (1997), Brutal Imagination(2001; National Book Award in Poetry finalist), andHardheaded Weather (2008).  He is the recipient of Guggenheim, Rockefeller, and NEA fellowships, as well as founder of Cave Canem Foundation, a nonprofit organization for black poets.

In addition to reading his work, Eady will perform with two members of his band “Rough Magic:” Concetta Abbate on violin and Charlie Rauh on guitar.

City Tech’s Literary Arts Festival is a long-standing tradition that celebrates student writing and features a special guest speaker, along with student readings and performances. For more information about the event, contact Professor Caroline Hellman at 718.260.4975 or chellman@citytech.cuny.edu. Join the Festival OpenLab site at https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/groups/literary-arts-festival/.

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Featured Course:  LIB 1201 – Research and Documentation for the Information Age 

This week we’re featuring Ian Beilin’s Research and Documentation for the Information Age.  We’re particularly interested in how successfully Professor Beilin has gotten his students to be honest and reflective in their comments on their own research process.  “To be honest, I feel like my brain is about to pop,” one student writes–and then several students offer thoughts and advice, sympathizing and even drawing on their own lives to help!  It’s really wonderful to see:  Drawing students’ struggles with their own work into the course, making it a course subject, and watching them strategize potential solutions together is exactly what the OpenLab is about.

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Featured Club:  Philosophy Club!

Someone very smart and interesting here at the City Tech OpenLab has started a Philosophy Club–we’re not going to say we know who, but we will say that he or she knows tons about philosophy, and you all should join the club!

(image by by hnmAck via Creative Commons License)

This week we visited a classroom and a student asked, “what’s a blog?” reminding us that sometimes there are some basic concepts that we might need to cover.  And so this week’s This Week is dedicated to a few videos that might come in handy in either your class (as student, or teacher), or more generally on the web.  Enjoy!

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What IS a Blog?

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Featured Course:  Suzanne Miller’s “Advanced Career Writing”/Roger Herra’s R&H Engineering

This week we’re featuring Suzanne Miller’s EN 3771 course, “Advanced Career Writing,” which uses the OpenLab in a particularly innovative way.  Each student in the class creates an OpenLab site as the home of a fictional company for which they create mission statements, business plans, potential events, and a blog.  It’s a great way to exploit one of the things the OpenLab can do best: give students the chance to try out different approaches and assignments, all of which can be bound together thematically.  This “umbrella” project format leaves students feeling they didn’t just do one unrelated assignment after another, but built upon their work to create a significant final project they can be proud of.

A nice example is Roger Herra’s “H&R Engineering,” which you can see here, which has a nice mission statement, solid design work, and a great piece on DIY projects.

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