This week is the TED Education week so I am happy to share these links with you. Exploring teaching and teaching philosophy is so valuable to us all as we strive for excellence in teaching.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/ted-talks-education/
http://www.ted.com/

If anyone is interested I think it would be great to get together and discuss some of the issues presented in these talks. Anyone interested?

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The workshop will consider how we respond to reviewer comments after submitting an article for publication. Understanding the editor’s point of view can help u successfully navigate this stage of the publication process.

Profs. Richard Hanley, editor of the Journal of Urban Technology, and Aaron Barlow, faculty editor for Academe http://www.aaup.org/reports-and-publications/academe, will lead a panel discussion on perspectives of the editor. They will describe strategies for submitting articles, responding to reviewer comments, and share some of their experiences and insights. Hope that you can attend.

If you can participate please RSVP to facultycommons@citytech.cuny.edu.

I just came across this set of excellent bibliographies on Teaching and Learning and  hope that the scope of the resources will be valuable to you. If you do use any of the sources please share what you learned with us. We will all benefit when we collaborate!

http://www.nyu.edu/cte/Library.html

http://bigbayfest.org/

For me, the activity that The Living Lab Fellows participated in with volunteers of the Bay Improvement Group (BIG) in Sheepshead Bay on March 15, 2013 created a long lasting impact on my experience and understanding of the people who live on the water front of New York City and on creating an academic service learning project.

Like many of us, I too survived the direct impact of Sandy. Living in a waterfront community myself that will be forever changed but was thankfully not devastated, many memories were brought to life again on this day. I, like so many people in the rest of the City, have move on to other poignant issues ranging from gun control to soda consumption, However, this day reminded me that our attention must remain with rebuilding what makes our diverse city so appealing to so many people from around the world.

Surveying members of the the community provided significant importance to the experience of the community and how we as faculty members can help support communities in need with the added benefit of supporting our course learning objectives as well. Our students are too at a point in their lives that service can help  develop a meaning of importance and empathy to those around us and help build greater purpose in what we have to offer our communities.

What I learned about academic service learning on this day and through the process of planning the activity was that the needs of the community must come first and that there must be well defined learning objectives and communication with all the people involved in the project. It also became important to me to make sure that even if there is a long term goal set for the project that immediate action can make a huge impact as well. May it be

that food is donated to a local food bank or that local businesses are patronized. The immediate “give back” helps in as many ways as the long term project will.

Sheepshead Bites, a blog focused on community activity, has covered a lot of the efforts made by the Bay Improvement Group (BIG). To read about their efforts click here.

http://www.sheepsheadbites.com/tag/bay-improvement-group/

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Consider how you can present your developing ideas at this year’s CUE Conference scheduled for May 10th at John Jay College.

Click here to visit the conference website.

Let me know what you think!