Category: Technology

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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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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”

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Presentation: Motivating Students to Succeed

LaGuardia’s Center for Teaching and Learning is currently sponsoring a New Faculty Colloquium. The New Faculty Colloquium is a year-long seminar designed to acclimate new faculty to the institution and to acquaint them with various pedagogical approaches to teaching. I was asked to present some of my recently published findings on motivating Black and Hispanic students to a new cohort of LaGuardia faculty. While the research for my presentation Continue reading “Presentation: Motivating Students to Succeed”

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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”