(Photo courtesy of Fort Lewis College Center of SouthWest Studies via creative commons)
It’s May!
Somehow, inexplicably, it’s May: that time of the school year about which we have such complicated feelings–the term is almost over, but in front of summer break stands tests, papers, exams, grading, final projects, and work work work! As Professor Jonas Reitz said to one of the community team members at the MetroTech Au Bon Pain, ‘It’s that time when everything happens!’ We couldn’t help but agree, and so this week we’re going to distract ourselves with gardening, and wine, and Babe Ruth.
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Featured Site: The Hospitality Garden
This week we wanted to bring your attention to the site run by the Hospitality Garden. The hospitality garden is a small plot of organic vegetables and flowers that is maintained by students and faculty from NYCity College of Technology (City Tech). It’s located on Flatbush Ave & Willoughby Street, in the Dekalb Market and it was created in order to “provide students with an opportunity to experience the fun, work, and beauty that comes with growing plants that can be used by culinary and pastry students in the Hospitality department at City Tech.” Go by and visit the garden anytime, but also be sure to check out the site, which features more information, a task schedule for the students, and a wonderful digital image gallery.
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Featured Assignment: Retail Wine Shop Assignment
(image by damarisr1)
Sticking with the Hospitality Management Department, where everything seems to be much more fun than one is supposed to have in college, this week we feature an assignment for Karen Goodlad’s Wine and Beverage Management course. Here, students were asked to visit a retail wine shop and give their thoughts. But more than that: some students really committed to this project–painting a truly impressive picture, a long narrative, and solid writing. We love to see how this sort of project which, like the OpenLab, is committed to relating students to the world and the world to students, can engender real and unmistakable enthusiasm. Great work, all around. And, of course, now we’re all thirsty.
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Newly Digitized Images of New York
For those of you who are working in New York City oriented courses, either as faculty members or students, or if you’re just interested in the city in which we all live, you might want to check out the nearly one million images of New York and its municipal operations that have just been made public for the first time on the internet. As The Daily Mail points out, the photo database is “culled from the Municipal Archives collection of more than 2.2 million images going back to the mid-1800s, the 870,000 photographs feature all manner of city oversight — from stately ports and bridges to grisly gangland killings.” Surely something to interest everyone, and great for student and faculty projects and courses.
You can read more about it here (including see the aforementioned grizzly gangster images). And you can browse the database here.
That’s it for this week. As always, contact us anytime!
