Category: New Media

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The new baby

I just got the new Acer Aspire V3-771G-9875 17.3-Inch laptop I ordered as an early birthday present to myself. I bought it online from Amazon for a great price. My 2009 17 inch Macbook Pro was starting to show it’s age with the old Intel Core 2 Duo processor powering it. I was starting to worry that my Macbook  was going to have problems dealing with the new Adobe CS6 software suite, especially the video based applications like After Effects and Premiere Pro. So I put on my big boy pants and finally pulled the trigger on a new Acer system.

 

Now for the record I am not happy that I have switched from Macs back to the darkside, but this laptop was too good to pass up. I love my macs but the new systems are priced too high when compared to some Windows systems. The desktop system that I built a few months back had made me more comfortable about switching to Continue reading “The new baby”

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CUNY Pathways & The Council of Digital Media Programs


A few months back I organized and hosted a panel discussion at John Jay College’s 10th Annual City University of New York (CUNY) IT Conference. The presentation was on “Creating a CUNY-wide approach towards Digital Media Programs” and focused on what I believe are some of the major issues facing digital media programs within CUNY. I assembled the panel group from colleagues at four separate CUNY institutions and within five distinct New Media subdivisions. We discussed strategies that the university could implement to prepare our digital media programs for the future.

One of the major initiatives that I suggested during the conference presentation was the establishment of a digital media council to address the specific needs and concerns of the faculty and students within the digital disciplines. Well I am happy to say that the first steps toward the creating a CUNY-wide digital media council happened today thanks to my colleagues in the Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC) Media Arts and Technology Department. Today a luncheon was held at Continue reading “CUNY Pathways & The Council of Digital Media Programs”

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Visual Effects Course Development

On April 3, the New York City Investment Fund invited a group of educators and business people from the visual effects industry to a conference on changes within the entertainment sector. Over the past year the LaGuardia Media and Technology programs have been participating in discussions with the New York City Investment Fund (NYCIF) to develop a Visual Effects program. NYCIF has been working with local visual effects firms to help them to meet the current demand for VFX artists in New York City.  All of the firms have cited the shortage of skilled labor as a key restriction to growth and are interested in working with CUNY on developing training and internships opportunities for the next generation of NYC visual effects artists. It is my intention to research this opportunity to see if a viable VFX program at LaGuardia is possible. In order to make that determination there are key questions that will need to be answered  concerning funding, software/hardware, the structure of the program or option, and how to either attract or develop faculty to teach such highly specialized classes. We will see how this all plays out. But just in case I have been getting reacquainted with After Effects.

The audio recording from the meeting can be found below in mp3 format.

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Attention Filmmakers: HDSLR Video & Audio workshop

HDSLR Workshop

This past weekend I had the pleasure of taking a workshop on capturing video and audio with HDSLR cameras at Student Filmmakers. The workshop was a two day event led by Patrick Reis, an independent filmmaker and cinematographer. Patrick is a veteran freelance industry professional with a great deal of experience working with the new Canon DSLR cameras. I had been wanting to jump into the DLSR video waters for awhile so I figured that Continue reading “Attention Filmmakers: HDSLR Video & Audio workshop”

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LaGuardia Academic IT Committee

Back in January of this year, I was asked to join the new LaGuardia Academic IT Committee.  This new committee has been convened by LaGuardia’Vice-President Katopes and Dean Arcario. Members of the group are tasked with the goals of creating a vision for Academic IT over the next 5 years by creating better communication between IT and Academic Affairs and  increasing on-line/hybrid courses. In many ways the LaGuardia Academic IT Committee is a reflection of what CUNY is doing and a more university wide scale with Committee for Academic Technology (CAT) of which I am also a member. While the Humanities department already had a committee representative, given my areas of expertise in digital media and technology, my participation was requested.

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LaGuardia Online/Hybrid Teaching Seminar

The above video is from a brief overview that I gave to some of my colleagues at LaGuardia Community College. I was asked to talk about some of the work that I am doing in converting my lectures from a traditional classroom environment to an Online/hybrid setting. This Online/hybrid seminar is a year long group discussion sponsored by LaGuardia’s Center for Teaching and Learning to assist faculty into making the transition to online instruction.

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HTML5 Cheat Sheets

Some of you might remember that I took an HTML5 and CSS3 training class at Noble Desktop a few months back. The class made me acutely aware of how important the newest version of HTML will be terms of web design, video streaming and mobile application development in the future. I came across the following HTML5 cheat sheets designed by InMotion Hosting and figured I would share these documents Continue reading “HTML5 Cheat Sheets”

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Mobile App Training with AS3 and Adobe AIR

One of the areas in new media that is experiencing phenomenal growth is mobile app development. Students see a large audience using smartphones and tablets, and as developers and entrepreneurs they want in on the market. I can’t blame them. I want in as well. Truth The money is good and the future for mobile devises is very strong. Due to the pressure of meeting my academic commitments I have been putting off training in mobile app development for the past year. Part of the issue was finding a quality school that teaches the material I needed at a reasonable price. This was Continue reading “Mobile App Training with AS3 and Adobe AIR”

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Presentation: Creating a CUNY-wide approach towards Digital Media Programs

The above video was from a presentation and panel discussion held at John Jay College’s 10th Annual City University of New York (CUNY) IT Conference. The emerging nature of Digital Media has challenged the ability of universities to adapt to a rapidly changing landscape. Due to the evolution of these new disciplines, and the speed in which cross-disciplinary technical innovations are implemented in programs with a digital media focus, very few universal standards are in place for instruction and assessment.

In order to set the stage for the panel discussion, my presentation focused on what I believe are some of the major issues facing digital media programs within CUNY. The panel group, assembled from my colleagues from various CUNY institutions, discussed specific strategies that the university could implement to prepare our digital media programs for the future.

Panel participants included:

Continue reading “Presentation: Creating a CUNY-wide approach towards Digital Media Programs”