Category: LaGuardia

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Times are a’ changing!

 

change-roadsign

I just found out that LaGuardia is going to be reorganizing the Computer Information Systems (CIS) department by merging the existing CIS programs with other departments throughout the college. The purpose of the reorganization is to improve overall departmental efficiency. The plan hasn’t been fully explained yet, but it was made clear that the students should not be impacted by shift since the majors will not be phased out, merely repositioned to other departments. We were also notified that the existing faculty will continue working for the college, we will just be teaching our courses in different departments.

All I can do for now is to keep teaching and keep a positive attitude. Change is always difficult. I know that better than some. But just like I tell my students, as long as you keep your skills up and work hard, you should never have to worry.

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ePortfolio Conference: Day Two

The second day of the ePortfolio conference was pretty much the same, just shorter. I had only one breakout session to cover, and it was a repeat of one of the sessions that I gave yesterday on the topic of ePortfolio system selection. This was a good thing because presentation partner, Susan Lambert, and I had a chance to work out the timing and presentation flow during our first run. As a result the second time through was a little easier. I was pleased that the turnout for the session, an early Saturday morning session, was so strong. We had a full room and the participants were very interactive. This is always a good sign because it means that they are at least interested in what you have to say. Nothing is worse than a quiet and unresponsive room. Luckily this wasn’t the case. The only negative was that I couldn’t stop thinking about my 25th high school reunion that was scheduled to take place later in the day.

The  presentations slides from my breakout sessions at the Making Connections Conference on ePortfolios (4/10/2008) can be found below:

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ePortfolio Conference: Day One

ePortfolio Systems Presentation

The first day of the LaGuardia ePortfolio conference went off without a hitch. I was amazed at the turnout and how smoothly things progressed. I have been to many conferences but I’d have to say that this was one of the best organized events I have seen. Bret Eynon and his team from the Center for Teaching and Learning put together an impressive lineup of sessions throughout the day. We had conference speakers and attendees from as far away as England and Nova Scotia. The breakout sessions covered a wide range of topics central to the subject of electronic portfolios.
Continue reading “ePortfolio Conference: Day One”

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ePortfolio Conference Planning

ePortfolio Conference Planning

I am starting to stress out just a little bit. You see over the next couple of days I have a series of presentations that I am giving at a major national conference LaGuardia is hosting. The conference, “Making Connections: ePortfolios, Integrative Learning and Assessment“, is on the topic of ePortfolios and how they can be utilized to assess student and institutional growth. Continue reading “ePortfolio Conference Planning”

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Microsoft IT Tech Trends Speech

The footage above is the actual video of the speech that I gave to a group of High School juniors and seniors during the Microsoft sponsored IT Tech Trends seminar earlier this month. The purpose of the seminar was to get high school students interested in IT careers. While it wasn’t my finest speech (I rambled a little bit), overall I think I did okay. The students seemed genuinely interested in what I had to say.

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Microsoft IT Tech Trends Seminar

Alfred Thompson, Academic Relations Manager for Microsoft

After my morning class the LaGuardia CIS department hosted an IT Tech Trends seminar yesterday that was sponsored by Microsoft. The seminar was open to high school juniors and seniors from the NYC area with the express purpose of getting them interested in IT careers in general, and IT studies at LaGuardia specifically. One of the schools that had confirmed backed out at the last minute because the coordinator had confused the dates and had booked parent-teacher conferences on the same day. The turn out, while not as big as we had originally expected, was still respectable. Continue reading “Microsoft IT Tech Trends Seminar”

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My first Flashcoders meeting

NYC Flashcoders meeting

I went to my first meeting of the New York City Flashcoders user group last night. I have been a member of the mailing list for a few months now and figured that it was time to meet the actual people behind the site. The Flashcoders user group appears to be one of the more active flash communities in the NYC area. In fact, this group of multimedia professionals meet about once a week to discuss and display cool new Flash based projects and tools. The meeting last night was about using Arduino in conjunction with Flash actionscript. Continue reading “My first Flashcoders meeting”

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Drupal Camp at PolyTech

Drupal Camp at Poly Tech

After the late, late party at Miko’s last night, I wasn’t hyped to get up early on a Sunday morning a head off to a  technical conference on administering and programming for Drupal. However since I needed to learn more about this open source content management system for a side project that I am working on called Ensideus.com (more on that soon), I dragged my sorry butt out of bed and headed to Brooklyn. Continue reading “Drupal Camp at PolyTech”

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LaGuardia & Bard Writing Workshop

Bard Writing Workshop

As a benefit of my participation in the LaGuardia and Baruch WID faculty colloquium I was able to attend an all day workshop on the process of defining “Academic writing”. The workshop was developed by English professors from Yale and Bard. A number of my colleagues in the WID workshop had attended a similar workshop last year and raved about it. LaGuardia was hosting a version of the same workshop for members of the English department. The leaders of the WID colloquium thought it would benefit the rest of us to have the same experience, so they acquired the funds to enable us to attend.

The workshop was both enlightening and a bit intimidating for me because I was out my academic discipline and the sole professor from outside of the English department. Now while I was an undergraduate Continue reading “LaGuardia & Bard Writing Workshop”

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Coldfusion User Group Meeting

Coldfusion User Group Meetings

Those of you that have been paying attention to my recent post might have noticed that I have been spending alot of time focusing on my digital audio and video chops. As I result I have been getting nervous that I been letting my web design/development skills start to slip. So to make sure that I didn’t let that happen, I needed to get motivated. The quickest way for me to get motivated is to spend time around other Continue reading “Coldfusion User Group Meeting”