This Week In The OpenLab: September 10th Edition

Usually our images have something to do with what’s going on at City Tech, but this week we were simply taken aback by this, described as “A huge crowd gathers outside The New York Times building in Times Square to hear play-by-play bulletins of the World Series between the Cleveland Indians and the Brooklyn Robins on Oct. 12, 1920.”  The image is in the public domain, and is another reminder of what wonderful things you can find via Creative Commons search of http://commons.wikimedia.org/.

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Featured Tip:  Welcome Email

The OpenLab now features an optional welcome email for your new members.  It’s extremely simple to use, though kept a little bit out of the way.  You can find it under PROJECT SETTINGS>EMAIL MEMBERS and then scrolling down.  Be sure to click SAVE!

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Featured Plug-In:  Subscribe2

Subscribe2 is a plug-in that allows “comprehensive email subscription management.”   Many of its features overlap with our already existing email members settings on the OpenLab.  But it also provides a number of things you might find valuable, including customizable unsubscribe messages (you can confirm that they wanted to unsubscribe, and thank someone for having been a member).

We think it might prove particularly valuable for those sites that have or hope to have a non-City Tech readership:  becoming a member of an OpenLab group requires OpenLab membership, which is available only to City Tech students, faculty and staff. However, you can make it easy for non-City Tech readers to follow your site.  If they subscribe through this plug-in, which will accept any valid email address, they will get a message anytime you add a new post.

You can learn more about setting up and managing this plug-in here, and as always contact us with any questions.

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Featured Site:  Writing Acros the Curriculum 

We want to highlight the presence of Writing Across the Curriculum on the OpenLab, and to encourage everyone who teaches and deals with writing in their courses to have a look at the resources being collected here.  You can check out their upcoming workshops and activities here.  And welcome to the new fellows!

 

pageMash


How To Install & Use PageMash For WordPress by newbizblogger

PageMash makes menu manipulation easy. Use if if you want to hide pages so they don’t show up on your menu, or if you want to quickly rename the page, or if you want to create parent/child pages (an odd way of saying “I want this page to appear as a dropdown on my menu”–the way the tutorials on The Open Road appear under “Useful Tools”).  You could do all these things before, of course, but this makes it easy and intuitive in ways that new WordPress users will love.  The above tutorial is just about perfect, and so we won’t try to improve upon it. Just note, however, that it won’t affect custom menus (though these have their own, relatively similar drag-and-drop interface.).

This Week in The OpenLab: September 3rd Edition

(image by Ed Yourdon via Creative Commons)

Hope you had a wonderful Labor Day weekend!  Courses are being built, projects are being started, and students and faculty are joining the OpenLab by the hundreds–the year is in full-swing here at City Tech.  As always, we’ll be highlighting what’s going on here at The Open Road.  Urge your friends to join, and we can work to make this a fruitful place for inquiry.  While most of The Open Road activity is here on this site, we do want to be sure that you notice our newish forum on our Project Page, which you can access here.  Tell us what you think, what you’d like to see, or start a discussion of your own (including asking questions about features!)

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Fall 2012 Workshops!

 

 

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Featured Tutorial:   pageMash


How To Install & Use PageMash For WordPress by newbizblogger

We just spent three minutes with pageMash and fell in love with how easy it makes Menu manipulation.  It makes things easy if you want to hide pages so they don’t show up on your menu, or if you want to quickly rename the page, or if you want to create parent/child pages (an odd way of saying “I want this page to appear as a dropdown on my menu”–the way the tutorials on The Open Road appear under “Useful Tools”).  You could do all these things before, of course, but this makes it easy and intuitive in ways that new WordPress users will love.  The above tutorial is just about perfect…

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Featured Site:  Bookonomic

While not an OpenLab (or even CUNY) site, Bookonomic is an impressive site created by a CUNY student as a way for students from all over the country to exchange books easily and privately.  You can join it, use it, or just learn more about it in the video below, but we’re also bringing it up here because it represents a student’s great idea made flesh.  While there are limitations on commerce on CUNY-hosted websites (the limitations being, well, one can’t engage in it), we here at the OpenLab would love to hear about your other great ideas, and we’d love to help you realize them.  Contact us anytime!

 

This Week in the OpenLab: August 27th Edition

(Image by ‘Mother of User”/Bullpit via Creative Commons)

Welcome back to the school year, first of all, and welcome back to our over 2,600 members!  Shocking to think how we’ve grown in such a short time–and we’re looking forward to another exciting year.

We’ve been terrifically busy over the summer updating and improving the OpenLab.  We’ll have a more comprehensive description of what we’ve done within the next week or so, and in the meantime we hope you like the changes you notice!

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Getting Started on the OpenLab Workshop

Wondering what the OpenLab is all about? Find out how to collaborate with your students and colleagues on the OpenLab in a mixed-level introductory workshop for faculty on Thursday, August 30th, from12:45-2:15pm.  We’ll be announcing the room momentarily.  Please RSVP here and let us know you’re coming!

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Featured Tutorial:   Prezi 

Prezi WP

 

This Week in the OpenLab: August 20th Edition

(Image by peapodsquadmom via Creative Commons)

Well, there’s no doubt that it’s back to school time, and we want to remind you first that there are OpenLab workshops this week and next.  The soonest of which are this Wednesday, the 22nd.  There are three that day, on various topics, and you can come to them all or just those in which you have a specific interest.  You can find out more in the image below.  Hope to see you there!

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Featured Tip:  Connecting Existing Sites to New Projects

There are changes all over the OpenLab, and we’ll be giving out a full description in the upcoming weeks, so please look forward to that!  But for right now, we think one critical improvement should be highlighted right away:

Before late August 2012, users could create sites that weren’t connected to a project.  In the process of improving the overall organization of the OpenLab, and to keep all the wonderful work everyone is doing here visible to everyone (when the creator chooses, that is), that had to change:  at this point all sites must  be connected to a project.

We have no doubt that this will improve the structure of our virtual campus, but it does mean that if you created a stand-alone site you’ll need to connect it to a project before it can appear in your “My OpenLab.”  But don’t worry, it’s still there!

To do so, go through the process that you would to create any Project, whether that’s a course, project, or club.   Follow the steps as you would when creating any project (see our help section for assistance on this).  When it comes time to create a site, though, you should see “Add an existing site” as one of your options, as in this screenshot:

NOTE:  this option will not appear if you did not create a stand-alone site–if you don’t see “Use an existing site,” then this tutorial is probably not for you.

In the drop-down (where it says ‘scotttest’) above, you should see your existing stand-alone site.  Click it, follow the rest of the instructions, and you’re done!

As always, contact us with any questions!

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FEATURED PROJECT:  WHAT IS WRITING?

More from the prolific Johanna Rogers!  This week we’re featuring her delightful project: What is Writing?, which offers a funny, witty, and image-driven look at some of the more basic (and some of the most complicated) questions about writing.   Given its visual tendencies, we think it’s probably especially useful for those disciplines where students might be more comfortable or used to visually-driven information.  Which is, of course, exactly the sort of cross-discipline usefulness the OpenLab is designed to facilitate.  But without question it’s useful for all of us here at City Tech, and so thanks Johanna!

Connecting Existing Sites to New Projects

Before late August 2012, users could create sites that weren’t connected to a project.  In the process of improving the overall organization of the OpenLab, and to keep all the wonderful work everyone is doing here visible to everyone (when the creator chooses, that is), that had to change:  at this point all sites must  be connected to a project.

We have no doubt that this will improve the structure of our virtual campus, but it does mean that if you created a stand-alone site you’ll need to connect it to a project before it can appear in your “My OpenLab.”  But don’t worry, it’s still there!

To do so, go through the process that you would to create any Project, whether that’s a course, project, or club.

First log in to the OpenLab, then click MY <choose your project> in the right hand column, then click CREATE <project>.

Follow the steps as you would when creating any project (see our help section for assistance on this).  When it comes time to choose a site, though, you should see “Use an existing site” as one of your options, as in this screenshot:

NOTE:  this option will not appear if you did not create a stand-alone site–if you don’t see “Use an existing site,” then this tutorial is probably not for you.

In the drop-down (where it says ‘scotttest’) above, you should see your existing stand-alone site.  Click it, follow the rest of the instructions, and you’re done!

As always, contact us with any questions!

This Week in the OpenLab: August 6th Edition

(image by kokogiak via creative commons)

Our own Charlie Edwards often refers to the OpenLab team as worker bees, and this month we very much are–the whole OL group, our developers and…well, everyone…are busily working away still on our major August update.  That said, only a couple short items this week…

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Featured Tutorial:  Share This, Redux

Last week we introduced the Share This tutorial–and we promised that this week we would give some explanaition of how its options work.  Well, we did it!  And you can find the full tutorial here.  As always, email us with any questions.

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Featured Blog:  Tributaries

This week’s Featured Bog isn’t here on the OpenLab, but on the CUNY Academic Commons.  It’s George Otte’s most recent contribution to the ongoing discussion about the relationship between technology and pedagogy–in particular the MOOCs (yes, that’s how it sounds–it stands for “massive open online courses”) which have been getting so much press of late.  You can read George’s insightful piece here.

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A Bit of News:  The Digital Library of America

Because we love libraries, and online open materials, we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention that “The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) (on July 26th) announced a $1 million award to support the incorporation and launch of the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), a groundbreaking project that seeks to digitize and bring together the contents of our nation’s libraries and archives, and make them freely available to all online.”  You can read more about this project, which is being done jointly with Harvard, here.

 

This Week in the OpenLab: July 31st Edition

(image by en:User:Acrow005 via Creative Commons License)

Big changes are coming, and we’re working away behind the scenes to bring you a new update on the OpenLab.  Keep your eye out over the next few weeks!

Featured Site, and a REQUEST!

This week we’re featuring Theatreworks, the resident theatre company at New York City College of Technology.  They’ve recently created an OpenLab presence, and in addition being excited about them as members, we want to pass along their request: They’re looking for student help building their site!

Remember that if you are a student (or a faculty or staff member, of course), you can always contact the OpenLab Community Team for help with any questions regarding site building.  We’re happy to answer via email, or you can set up a help-session specificially for your group.

But more on Theaterworks! Theaterworks 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 email cscott@citytech.cuny.edu

FEATURED PLUG-IN:  SHARE THIS

This week we’re also featuring the plug-in “Share This,” which adds the social media bar above to all posts and pages, allowing your followers, members or readers to easily share things that they like.  You can even click the green “Share” button in the bar and then choose multiple platforms to share with simultaneously (that is, you can share with twitter and facebook with one click).

You can find out more about configuration on our tutorials page, but it may be our simplest plug-in yet:  go to plug-ins in the left-hand column of your dashboard, activate the “Share This” plug-in, and what you see above will appear!

That’s all for this week.  Have a great one, and as always contact us with any questions!