The Adventures of a Digital Sensei
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”
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”
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”
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.
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.
Overall, I was very disappointed at what Apple announced today concerning their much anticipated update to the iPad. Let me state for the record that I absolutely love my 1st generation iPad. I love it so much that I touched my Kindle and netbook for the first time in months the other day only to brush the dust off of them as I was cleaning up my bedroom. And I loved both of those devises when they Continue reading “iPad 2…..ehh!”
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”
Just a quick video on my weekend with the kids at the Comic Con. I was extremely proud of my 9 year old son who shot and edited much of the above video on his own. I am hoping to spark his desire to become an indie filmmaker. We picked up a bunch of collectible action figures Continue reading “2010 NYC Comic Con”
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”
One of the reasons why I haven’t posted anything recently was because for the past month I have been working hard to finish all of the marketing and promotional materials for the new LaGuardia Media and Technology website. The New Media program had been without a web site since the college administration decided to relocate the New Media degree from the now dissolved Computer and Information Systems (CIS) department to the Humanities department. The relocation of the program offered me an opportunity to redesign the curriculum in a more effective way. However, all of the recent changes in the curriculum, as well as the physical relocation of the actual program had caused a bit of a confusion. The new website was merely one of the tools that we developed to minimize the pain of the transition.