Category: LaGuardia

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Just look at what the CAT dragged in!

In the fall of 2008, Peter Katopes Vice President of Academic Affairs at LaGuardia Community College) appointed me to the CUNY wide Committee for Academic Technology (CAT). I was asked to act as LaGuardia’s representative on all issues pertaining to the use of advanced technology in support of pedagogy. This assignment required me to attend monthly meetings and frequent sub-committee sessions to vote on issues of how technology should be adopted throughout CUNY. In addition to helping to support CUNY’s overall vision, I acted as LaGuardia’s liaison  to the CAT committee to insure that LaGuardia interests were fully represented. My involvement as a member of the CAT group required me to serve as a member on the CAT sub-committees for Blackboard and ePortfolio. I would like to believe that my participation was extremely valuable on these sub-committees due to my experience as LaGuardia’s initial Director of ePortfolio and my work with vendors like Concord and Blackboard to link disparate systems to support ePortfolio.

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ePortfolio System Consulting

During the spring and summer of 2009, I served as a consultant to the LaGuardia Community College Center for Teaching and Learning in the area of ePortfolio Systems selection. I assisted the members of  LaGuardia’s Center for Teaching and Learning and IT department in choosing the new ePortfolio platform to accommodate growth and to replace the aging Concord system that I helped to select years ago when I served as LaGuardia’s first Director of ePortfolio. I was asked by Dean Bret Eynon to review the leading commercial and open source systems and help select three platforms to evaluate for final consideration. Because ePortfolio is a critical component in many of LaGuardia’s strategic goals, not the least of which is Institutional Assessment, helping to choose the correct platform was of vital importance to the college. Due to my extensive knowledge of technology, and my experience in selecting and negotiating the contract for the first system nearly seven years ago, I was asked to work with the current Director, Mercedes Del Rosario, and her staff to assist where needed. I provided the following assistance during this project:

  • Helped to select which systems we should investigate
  • Selected the hosting company to host the open source solutions
  • Evaluated all of the proprietary and open source solutions
  • Provided recommendations on software and hardware for the project
  • Served as a technical resource on all issues related to hosting, networking, programming, and coordinating a project of this magnitude

In the final analysis, LaGuardia decided upon the system from Digication as a the new platform to support the ongoing eportfolio objectives of the college.

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Final Cut Pro Training – Basic edit reel

Final Cut class

This summer I am taking courses at a variety of design schools in the area. Here is my most recent video editing reel that I completed at the School of Visual Arts in their weekend Final Cut Pro class. While I am experienced with Final Cut (been using it since version 1.0), I figured it is a good idea to brush up on Final Cut since I have been focusing more on web design topics lately. Plus I plan on Continue reading “Final Cut Pro Training – Basic edit reel”

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2009 – Summer of Code

Noble Desktop

It has been a long time since I have actually sat inside of a formal classroom as a student. I spend most of my time on the other side of the fence. However this summer has helped me better understand some of the challenges that my students must experience. Challenges with class availability. Challenges with scheduling conflicts. Challenges with learning a great deal of material in a finite amount of time. All of the things that I generally don’t have to Continue reading “2009 – Summer of Code”

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Publication Seminar

Path Seminar

Today I attended a workshop at LaGuardia designed to help junior faculty, like myself, identify greater opportunities to publish. The workshop was led by Dr. Jane Johansen of the University of Southern Indiana. Dr. Johansen is a very dynamic speaker and covered a impressive amount of material during the day long session.

The seminar today was the first of a series of workshops  being held over the course of the semester. This first workshop was extremely helpful because I was made aware of a few new journals that apply to my field. The other benefit was that I came away with some great concepts for the new articles that I am planning to write.

 

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First week back on that old hustle!!

First day back in class
This is the first week back teaching after being out of the classroom since mid-December. Now granted, I have been doing alot of work around the college and redesigning the curriculum for the New Media Technology program. However, that is very different from teaching and being in the classroom in front of students. But I have to say that it is amazing how quickly I am able to get back into the flow now that I have been teaching for a couple of years. While I am far from a veteran, I no longer feel like a rookie either.

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Old memories

In searching through some old disks I came across this old Quicktime multimedia project that I did when I was back in graduate school. The piece was designed as a letter to my daughter. The purpose of the project was to document all of the feelings resulting from the event of her birth. I thought that it might be cool to record some of my emotions in order to give her some insight on her family history for when she was older. It was on of the first digital stories that I had created and, in many ways, was a precursor to my interest in ePortfolios.

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Presentation: The 4th Annual CUNY Gen-Ed Conference

Yesterday I presented at the 4th Annual CUNY Gen-Ed Conference as part of a group of faculty focusing on ways in which cross campus communication can be improved between community colleges and senior institutions. As part of the year long seminar with colleagues from LaGuardia and Baruch, we decided to share our research and discussions by presenting at the Gen-Ed Conference. I have previous discussed this faculty seminar in one of my earlier posts. The conference presentation was memorable for me in that it was the first time in which my wife and I were able to present together.

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3rd Annual New Media Conference: Blender Guru confirmed

Nick PorcaroFinally some more good news after a week of anxiety. It is official, Nick Porcaro, one of the founders of the NYC Blender User Group, is confirmed to present at our 3rd Annual New Media conference. I had been working on getting Nick to present for awhile. This week he emailed me and graciously agreed to give an overview of the Blender application at our conference. Nick’s talk will be an introduction to computer graphics using Blender. He will address topics such as, mesh modeling, texturing, rendering, animation, and real time interaction.

Continue reading “3rd Annual New Media Conference: Blender Guru confirmed”