The Adventures of a Digital Sensei
Today I was one of the judges for the movie trailer competition to promote Tom Seymour’s new film, Mark of the Beast. The competition featured a number of students from the Media and Technology programs at LaGuardia. The students were competing for Continue reading “Judge ye not….”
I wanted to share with you a recently published article on the topic of the student motivation that I authored. The title of the piece is “Motivating at Risk African Americans and Hispanics Through the Study of New Media Technology“. The peer-reviewed article was based on many of the interactions that I have had over the years with my amazing students. The primary focus of the research was on how to inspire African American and Hispanic students by using digital media. However, the principles and techniques described can be applied to students of all races and cultures. The article was published in the second edition of the Hispanic Educational Technology Services (HETS) Online Journal. The digital copy of the journal can be found here in pdf format.
This week I had the opportunity to be a Faculty Leader during LaGuardia’s Spring 2011 New Student Orientation seminar. The purpose of the seminar is to introduce incoming Freshmen to all of the programs, services and activities available at LaGuardia. The hope is that by giving students a comprehensive introduction to student life at LaGuardia, their transition to college will be a satisfying experience. It is also a great way for faculty and students to interact outside of the traditional classroom setting.
I was backing up a few of my old hard drives and came across some old student work that I had forgotten. The following video was shot by some of my New Media Technology students back in 2008. The students that produced the video were all students in my HUW163 Internet Video and DVD Production class. The video was a solid Continue reading “Old LaGuardia New Media Student Videos”
LaGuardia’s annual Commencement exercises took place earlier this week and I just wanted to wish all of the graduates of the class of 2010 success and happiness in the future. I specifically want to congratulate all of the following New Media Technology gradu Continue reading “Congrats to the Class of 2010”
Earlier today a former LaGuardia New Media student, Miki Masuda, came in to speak to some of my capstone students about her experiences working in digital design, and transferring from LaGuardia to a senior college. Now just to give you some background, new media capstone students at LaGuardia are generally my most advanced designers. The have taken many of the required courses and are usually just a semester or so away from graduating. The capstone class, HUW 269 – New Media Project Lab, that I am teaching is designed to assist students in developing a final professional portfolio to facilitate transfer to a senior college or gain employment as a New Media designer.
Miki is an amazing designer. When I was looking for a guest speaker Continue reading “Old students return”
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.
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.
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.