Monthly Archives: February 2014

Josh’s Project ideas

Really interesting ideas that people have, and I’ll try to respond to specific posts– time permitting– soon. Below are my project ideas… so far. I might be able to work on more than one of these in the future as well. We’ll see!

  1. The first project idea that occurs to me is neither earth-shattering nor particularly interesting per se. It will, however, serve a useful purpose for students at BMCC where I work, immediately upon implementation. I want to revise, revamp, renovate, re-tool, reorganize, restore, rebuild, repair, remake, and/or otherwise improve the wiki page that I have created for the ESL Lab, which I oversee at BMCC. I created the page on a wiki platform site called Wet Paint, which has since been bought, and the site’s been renamed; it’s now called Wiki Foundry. Anyway, the ESL Lab wiki functions more like a website than a wiki, in that it’s not particularly collaborative (other than some of the faculty who contribute/write/edit), the reason being that the site is meant to be a repository of information, links, materials and interactive exercises/activities for English language learners at BMCC rather than a student-created/collaborative wiki. I would like to partner with English and Developmental Skills faculty at the college to create some new content for the site, and also introduce more interactive elements and/or games. We actually get a lot of traffic to the site already, CUNY wide, particularly from students looking for information about how to prepare and practice for taking the CATW Writing exam which allows them to pass out of remediation into credited English classes. I think we will get a lot more hits, though, if the wiki is improved. It is possible that the Wiki Foundry interface is too constrictive to substantially improve the site, but if it is possible to stay at the same web address I’d prefer it, as it is already an existing destination for a lot of people (at CUNY at least).
  2. On a related note, I would like to create, and hopefully improve upon, a site comparable to John Jay College’s E-Resource Center with unique content, and affiliated with BMCC. The John Jay site is wonderfully useful in many ways, but consists of mainly Flash animation slideshows, which make for a slow experience and handcuffs the visitor to the site, as she waits for the timed slides to present at their own pace. I am interested in creating something perhaps both CUNY-specific and more general, providing interactive composition/grammar/reading comprehension activities helpful (hopefully) to any college student. I know that the John Jay site was grant funded [the E-Resource home page notes: Funded by the U.S. Department of Education (Title V) and the New York State Education Department (Perkins III)]. I feel like if I could get hold of some grant money, faculty will be interested in collaborating. This project could/would be built from scratch.
  3. I have no idea how, but I would like to learn how to create an app, again to assist students to improve their English writing/grammar skills, perhaps for ELLs (English Language Learners), perhaps for native writers/speakers of English. This could be a game-based app or not… I know so little about what this potential app would look like, or what it would entail to build it, that I will stop here, so we can discuss this in class.

 

 

 

Joshua Belknap: Biograph

I am an English doctoral student at the CUNY Grad Center. I am interested in rhetoric and composition, ELL (English Language Learner) writers, the history of education, and the relationships between technology, pedagogy and writing. At BMCC (CUNY), I am the coordinator of the ESL (English as a Second Language) Lab, where I oversee a staff of writing tutors, as well as an adjunct writing instructor in the English Department (when I have time to teach).

Project ideas

Sorry to all of you for receiving two previous emails with this post (this being the third).  This one has one added idea, so there 🙂

Hi all,

Here are some ideas I have about possible projects.  I have no clue how feasible these projects actually are.

1.  I’ve been playing a game on my phone called QuizUp.  It has different categories with several topics in each (e.g., Arts –> architecture, musicals, paintings, etc.).  You can connect through Facebook and play against your friends or you can play against strangers.  As you win matches, you go up in levels.  I think something like this could be used in my Intro to Psychology course, or any course that is term-heavy.  Students could play against each other and maybe even gain points for making it past a certain level.

2.  Sorry for the lit review… I read a study in which professors created a Facebook page for the class.  Level of disclosure was manipulated (high, medium, and low).  The researchers were investigating whether amount of self-disclosure by professors had any effect on students’ motivation and students’ perception of the professor and class climate.  They found that, indeed, high self-disclosure led to greater motivation and greater positive perceptions of the professor and class climate.  Some students, however, felt that teacher use of Facebook was inappropriate.  :/

This study got me thinking about the possibility of creating a Facebook-style page for courses. Students and professors could post course-relevant articles, pictures, links, etc.  Not that sure about this idea, though. I must admit. I’m not sure there’s much new here, is what I mean.

3.  Kathleen Fitzpatrick’s book Planned Obsolescence got me thinking about how great it would be to receive feedback on projects as I was hammering them out.  It’s what I get to do in lab with my advisor and lab mates, but what if that process could be opened up to others within the field?  By the way, I ran this idea by two of my lab mates and they were in no uncertain terms against it.  Their fears of being “scooped” were too great to entertain the benefits of having extra eyes and brains on their unfinished work.  I tried to explain that there would be evidence of their ideas being theirs, in case someone tried to pass it off as their own, but they had stopped listening.  I envision this being a website that would facilitate the process of feedback.

This idea is the riskiest, and I imagine the one that would be the hardest to get off the ground. It’s also the one I believe in the most.

4.  I’ve also been thinking about the use of clickers in the classroom and wondering if there may not be a more accessible way of doing the same thing.  What if smartphones could be used to interact with the instructor’s lecture?  Kind of like how I can get my iphone to communicate with my appleTV.  This sounds complicated to me, but since we’re dreaming things up…

That’s it for now.

Jared R. Pike- Bio

Jared R. Pike is a Ph.D. student at The Graduate Center, CUNY whose work focuses on the cultural power dynamics in theatrical performance. Current research interests include: the role of space in performances of history, digital media in the performance of history in museums, and the cultural power dynamics in German theatre during the period of unification.

Jared’s Project Idea

In thinking about possible project ideas for this course, there is one particular project that stands out in my mind, which I have been mulling over for some time now. I would like to create an app that would combine concepts of interactive technology and pedagogy with concepts from performance studies. Drawing on similar technology used in Bluebrain’s interactive music composition “Listen to the Light” in Central Park in 2011, I would develop an a soundscape for the city drawn from recorded sound archives, such as speeches, radio programing, and oral histories. As the user explores the city spatially, the app would allow the user to explore the history and diversity of New York City. In addition to linking the audio to the geolocation information, the app would also display information about the sound clip being played and relevant historical information.  

I believe this project has the potential to enhance learning and teaching about New York City’s social and cultural history. While the app could offer traditional curated walking tours, putting the information in sequence for the user, the benefit of the geolocation technology is that it allows the individual to craft their own experience. The individual becomes a flaneur, like a character in a Joyce novel, who spends the day exploring the city on multiple levels. The app could perhaps be pushed further, to create a stronger pedagogical experience, by adding a gaming element. In this scenario the user travels the city searching the historical recordings for items in a digital scavenger hunt.

This project also offers several opportunities for collaboration with various institutions in the city: The New York Public Library, The New York Historical Society, The Museum of the City of New York, as well smaller museums who have interesting collections that could be incorporated into the project. Additionally, the project seems to be ideal not only for recent digital pedagogy initiatives, but also for the recent push for Public Humanities programs.

In terms of scope, the project offers opportunities to start small and then expand. I would be possible to establish the framework while working in a small geographic area, such as a single neighborhood or Washington Square Park, and then expand out bit by bit.

Project Idea

As a Philosophy major, I am interested in developing a digital tool that facilitates reading and learning philosophy.  I’ve been thinking about an interactive world map that will shift through the different major eras of philosophical thought (Ancient, Modern, etc).  Each era will have specific highlighted regions that you could mouse-over to reveal a pop up window that lists the philosophers prominent in that region, during that time.  Each philosopher would then link out to another pop up window that gives a brief bio of the author, his/her work, and his/her major contributions; list of his/her prominent authored works (with links to text when available); and a short list of related authors (with links to their pop up).  This would allow a quick and easily navigable history of philosophy in order to establish context (both historically and geographically) which is essential to understanding much of philosophical text.

 

Adam Wagner Bio

Since I am new to the class, having not taken Core I, I suppose I ought to do one of these.  My name is Adam Wagner.  I am in my second semester in the MALS program in the Digital Humanities track.  I have a BA in Philosophy from UNF in Jacksonville, FL where I moved here from.  My research interests include media culture studies, cognitive science, and philosophy of mind.  I have no formal teaching experience, but my goal is to continue my higher education culminating in a PhD in Philosophy and enter in to academia.  I am very excited about this course and would love to soak it all in and learn as much as I can from all of you.  Thanks, and I look forward to the rest of the semester.

-Adam

Christina’s Project Ideas

Here’s a couple of ideas that I’ve been playing around with:

1. Over the past two semesters I’ve been working with undergraduate students with autism at the College of Staten Island through a program called Project REACH. The program is designed to assist and support students as they transition from a fully-supportive high school environment to a more independent and socially complex college environment. Through my Second Year Research Project I was able to identify specific areas in which students were struggling. Not surprisingly, many of these problem areas surround social interactions with peers and teachers using computer-mediated communication such as structuring emails towards varying audiences, navigating Blackboard, and setting up privacy settings on Facebook. I recently submitted a small grant proposal to assist with implementation of a 4-week series of summer transitional workshops to target incoming freshmen on the spectrum. The summer program would consist of 2 rounds of focus groups (1 in the beginning, 1 in the end for assessment and evaluation), 4 weeks of formal classroom-based instruction meeting twice a week, and on-going opportunities for students to practice the skillsets they are learning. Overall, this is my first choice for the project.

2. Another nagging problem that I’ve come across in my teaching career has been the lack of resources for novice psychology instructors, especially within the CUNY system. This year the Graduate Center was awarded the “host school” position for the Graduate Student Teaching Association. We’ll be serving as a major resource for graduate students as they begin their teaching careers. Many of the CUNY campuses have support systems in place for graduate student instructors (CSI, GC, etc.), but students are unaware of these resources. I’d like to greatly improve the GSTA website by adding in extensive course content – teaching activities, articles on teaching, sample syllabi, instructions for developing teaching philosophies, etc. This site could be a resource for CUNY instructors, in addition to the surrounding world outside of CUNY.

Christina’s Brief Bio

Hi All,

I’m a third year student in the Psychology Program on the Developmental track. I’ve been involved in a few research projects surrounding social networking sites, specifically looking at how students learn about, join, and navigate sites like Facebook. I’ve also been involved with projects designed to facilitate learning through the use of online and offline gaming environments.

This is my fourth time teaching a Human Development class at Hunter for 160(ish) students. Although technology is never consistently available in my classroom, I’m particularly interested in helping students to use their out-of-class time more effectively. I enjoyed the theory from last semester, but I’m excited to learn and directly implement some of the tools that we’ll be covering this semester.