Category: New Media

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LaGuardia Event: Ryan Charles speaks

Over the past few months I have been working with Janice Karlen, a colleague of mine from the LaGuardia Business and Technology Department, to arrange for a guest speaker to come in and speak to our students. Janice thought it would be a great idea to collaborate on a joint event since there is a natural synergy between the Business and Technology and the New Media Technology students. As a result of Janice’s connections we were lucky enough to secure Ryan Charles, the Co-Founder of Consmr.com and former head of mobile strategy at Zagat. Ryan was Continue reading “LaGuardia Event: Ryan Charles speaks”

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Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Launch

So last night I get in late from teaching an evening class and my son meets me at the door in damn near a panic. He tells me they are finalizing the pre-order sales for “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3” right now and we have to get to Gamestop so that we can get in line number for the 12am launch. Now keep in mind that I was hungry and tired before I started earlier teaching that evening, so at this point this is the last thing I wanted to hear. Son or not I almost told Continue reading “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Launch”

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HTML 5 and CSS 3 Training Class

In order to enhance the knowledge that I acquired in January when I took the WordPress theme design class at Noble Desktop,  I decided to sign up for an HTML5 and CSS3 course. The industry is rapidly moving towards these new standards due to the advanced feature sets in HTML5 and CSS3 which allows for advanced animation, as well as for audio and video files to natively be supported in the browser without the need for third party plug-ins like Adobe’s Flash. While I didn’t feel like spending the money for the class, I needed to get up to speed on the new standards in order update the LaGuardia New Media curriculum, and to complete a much needed design update to my own web site. The class was once again held at Noble Desktop, and was once again, led by an amazing teacher named Victoria Torres. The two day course took us through the process of building an site from scratch using these new standards.

One of the unforeseen benefits of the class was that HTML 5 and CSS 3, when used in conjunction with a new mobile framework called PhoneGap, is becoming an excellent way of building mobile applications for both Android and iOS devises. PhoneGap was recently purchased by Adobe and was integrated into the latest version of Dreamweaver, release 5.5. This is a huge development for me since I can leverage our existing curriculum and begin to instruct students in the basics of mobile application develop by using PhoneGap.

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The 2011 NYC Comic Con

The NYC Comic-Con was in town so the kids and I engaged in our yearly ritual. They had been looking forward to it since we went last year. The wife tagged along again for her second year. She will never admit it but I think she is starting to enjoy the madness as well. The kids had a blast as usual.

I was shocked how many people that ran into at the event that I knew from academia and business. I guess being a nerd is no longer a bad thing. The photos from the weekend can be found below….. Continue reading “The 2011 NYC Comic Con”

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Adobe eMagazine and Digital Publishing Training

In one of my earlier posts from a few months back I discussed how I took a group of my students to Noble Desktop  to view a presentation on digital books and ePublishing. What I didn’t mention was that the following day I signed myself up for two of the courses the Noble Desktop offers on creating eBooks and digital magazines with the new tools available from Adobe. Well, I recently completed both classes and was highly impressed with the tools currently available. Adobe has made some interesting strides in creating software that will enable designers and writers to easily publish contents in numerous formats on multiple platforms.

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AAUP Conference: Presentation Day

The three and a half hour long train excursion down to Washington, DC did nothing to lessen my exhaustion of the last few days. Even though, I have to admit the the seating room on the Amtrak trains allowed me to sleep quite easily. Those big reclining chairs are way more comfortable than the JetBlue airline seats that I almost purchased. The good thing is that despite the bleary eyes, my afternoon presentation on “Redefining Tenure and Promotion Standards for Multimedia and Digital Arts Faculty” was fairly well received at the annual AAUP national conference on the State of Higher Education. The only major problem with

Continue reading “AAUP Conference: Presentation Day”

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AAUP Conference: Preparation

Tomorrow I am traveling to the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) Annual State of Higher Education Conference in Washington, DC to present some of my research on “Redefining Tenure and Promotion Standards for Multimedia and Digital Arts Faculty”.The presentation is based off of an article that I will be submitting for publication. This is a topic of importance many of the current new media professors teaching within higher education, And in the spirit of full disclosure, it is a topic of great importance to me as an non tenured college professor. I will post the video from the conference when I return. I am taking two of the Kodak Zi8 mini HD cameras to the conference to film the event. This is the little camera that I have fallen in love with recently. But again I digress. The full session description for the presentation

Continue reading “AAUP Conference: Preparation”

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Class Trip: Seminar on digital books and ePublishing

Today I took my HUW161 Web and Multimedia Design class to a talk on digital books and ePublishing held at Noble Desktop. The seminar was hosted by Dan Rodney, lead instructor and co-owner of Noble Desktop. Digital publishing has been attracting a great deal of attention as a result of all of the new ereaders and tablet devises that have been hitting the market. Amazon reported earlier this year that eBooks on the Kindle began outselling print books in 2010. In addition to books, magazines are moving to the iPad and other tablet as well. Adobe has just released a new digital publishing suite that companies such as Wired, Martha Stewart are using to create digital magazines for devices. Even more shocking is the fact that relatively unknown authors like Amanda Hocking, as well as more established writers like Barry Eisler are profiting from these new digital formats. It is going to be interesting to see how these new developments will impact upon traditional print media outlets. Digital publishing is hot and designers should be learning about it now. I think my students enjoyed the talk.

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The 2011 LaGuardia Publication Reception

This was a brief speech that I gave on the recent article that I authored addressing “Motivating at risk African American and Hispanic students through the study of New Media Technology“. I mentioned this article in one of my earlier posts. The reception was held at LaGuardia Community College. Special thanks to Michael Philogene of LaGuardia’s Business and Technology Department for the impromptu camera work.

The program for the event can be found here: PresidentReception11.pdf