Webinar: Creating Engaging Content

Here is the video from my recent webinar on “Creating Engaging Content for the Web and Social Media”. This was the second in a multi-part series of online seminars to educate potential students at CUNY School of Professional Studies about the field of new media. I decided to conduct the webinar because attracting users to build a sustainable social media presence for themselves or their organizations requires the Continue reading “Webinar: Creating Engaging Content”

The NYC Tech Scene and Community Colleges

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Almost a year ago Shuprotim Bhaumik and the team from HR&A Advisors produced a comprehensive report on the New York City Tech Ecosystem and how it is generating economic opportunities for many New Yorkers (http://www.hraadvisors.com/nyctechstudy/). Last week Gail Mellow, President of LaGuardia Community College, had a number of the college faculty and staff attend another important meeting with the same team from HR&A.

Shuprotim and his team gave a presentation that went a step further than Continue reading “The NYC Tech Scene and Community Colleges”

Bridging the Gaps in Digital Media

The following video is of a panel discussion I organized for the 13th Annual CUNY IT Conference back in December. The talk that took place was on the topic of designing digital media programs within higher education. I gathered a number of my colleagues from some of the digital media programs throughout CUNY to find out how they approach program design and the maintenance of curricula in evolving technical disciplines.

This has been an area that has been on my mind since completing the Periodic Program Review for the LaGuardia New Media Technology degree, as well Continue reading “Bridging the Gaps in Digital Media”

New Media Tech Info Session

This a short video excerpt of a discussion on the field of digital development and the upcoming changes to the New Media Technology program at LaGuardia Community College. Last year I was tasked with the responsibility of conducting the Periodic Program Review (PPR) for the New Media Technology program at LaGuardia. In drafting the PPR I was forced to research the current status of the industry in which the program was preparing students to enter in the hopes of developing a plan to assess the effectiveness of the major and improve student outcomes.

Based on the information discovered during my research, I Continue reading “New Media Tech Info Session”

UFS Conference on Assessing Online Instruction

Yesterday I trekked up to John Jay College and took part in a panel discussion on the Virtual Classroom and assessing online instruction. The discussion was held at the CUNY – University Faculty Senate (UFS) Conference on Online Education.

There were breakout sessions on numerous topics dealing with the future direction of online education. The new Continue reading “UFS Conference on Assessing Online Instruction”

New Media Technology Class of 2014 – Project Lab

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Last night was the end of the semester for the Spring 2014 LaGuardia New Media Technology capstone class. Over the course of the semester we covered a great deal of material and developed some interesting final portfolios. This semester we even had one student with limited mobility participate remotely in a mixed hybrid/traditional format. I am amazed when I realize that this would not have been possible a few years ago.

New Media Tech: LaGuardia Graduation 2014

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Another year has gone by and another group of New Media graduates are ready to move on to the next stage of their journey. After 13 years of teaching this never gets old. My students are the absolute best part of the job.

To all of the New Media Technology graduates, past and present, congratulations! Your old professor is proud of each of you. Be bold and do big things, because I still have my eyes on you!

New Office Again??

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Finally got access to my new office at LaGuardia. I am not going to unpack because I have been told that both the New Media program and I will be moving to the Business and Technology department in the Fall. If the move goes through it will be my third department and fifth office in 8 years at the institution. Luckily I am master at musical chairs.

Still, I am hoping that I can convince the administration that moving the program yet again, and to another single department, would be a bad idea. All of the research that I did last year on the design and successful building of digital media programs points to the need for a truly cross disciplinary approach in this time of technological convergence. Placing programs in departmental silos runs counter to the natural intersection of traditional forms of communication, finance, and entertainment occurring as a result of the new high tech methods of delivery that have emerged in recent years. I guess only time will tell.

On the positive side, it is a really nice office.

I might need to hit lotto

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Apple finally got around to offering pricing and purchasing options for the new MacPro on their web site. Unfortunately the listing is just before the Christmas holiday and a tiny bit too late for me to ask Santa, or my wife, to put one of them under the tree for me this year. This is probably a good thing since the fully maxed out version of the MacPro with a 12 core Intel Xeon E5 processor, 64 GB of ram, Dual AMD FirePro D700 GPUs,  and a 1 TB internal flash base hard drive clocks in at Continue reading “I might need to hit lotto”