Tagged: CUNY

Queens College Changes it Address… to Queens

Although we are located in Flushing, Queens College has been serving all the people of Queens for 75 years. To reinforce this idea that Queens College is a resource for all the communities in our borough, the college’s address has undergone a small change.

Effective immediately, the college’s official address for all external postal mail is now 65-30 Kissena Blvd., Queens, NY 11367-1597. You should now use this address (and not Flushing, NY) for all outgoing mail and on any brochures, posters, or other printed matter. Please note that the full 9-digit zip code-11367-1597-must be used.

This is a good move. Although the college is geographically in Flushing, it did not feel to me like it is culturally in Flushing.

Media Technologies, Spring 2013, Syllabus

The syllabus for Media Technologies, at CUNY Queens College, is now available on my professional website.

The very brief course description:

An overview of media technologies, including early writing and the printing press, the rise of mass culture, and the digital revolution.

This is the first time I’ve taught this particular course. The biggest challenge was finding a competent textbook. I didn’t quite find what I was looking for, but I did find a fairly good collection of readings about different communication forms. Tim Wu’s The Master Switch, a terrific book on media technologies and those who control them, will supplement the readings.

The above links to Amazon are affiliate links. If you buy something through those links, I will earn a commission fee.

History of Cinema, 1880-1930, Spring 2013 Syllabus

The syllabus for History of Cinema I, 1880–1930, at CUNY Queens College, is now available on my professional website.

From the course description:

A survey of international film history from the beginnings of public film exhibition to the coming of sound. This course covers early motion picture technology, the development of narrative and editing techniques, and the growth of the studio system and national cinemas around the world.

I am absolutely thrilled to teach a semester-long class on only silent film. Some students will probably feel otherwise, but it will be a worthwhile challenge to excite them about film when it was new and full of limitless possibilities.

Lotus Notes… It’s Not Me, It’s You

Late last week, Queens College announced that they were allowing staff and faculty migrate away from Lotus Notes to a new system, based on Microsoft Exchange, known as MyMail. When I saw the announcement, I signed up as quickly as I could for the migration, even if it meant depending on Exchange for yet another account. As of Friday, I am now free of Lotus Notes, and I could not be happier.

Since I work only as an adjunct instructor, I do not actually work on campus nor collaborate with any staff. Much of Lotus Notes is bloatware for me: I only use the email service and none of it through a Lotus Notes client. Again, I work mostly off-campus and use my own computer, tablet, and smartphone and don’t have a Lotus client.

Even with my limited needs for Lotus Notes, the experience of using email was simply too painful for me. As I wrote of my experience at Fordham, I had lots of problems using Lotus Notes with my own devices. None of my web browsers were “certified” to work with Lotus Notes and thus certain features, such as logging off, were unavailable to me. Also, whenever I checked email on one device, any changes to my messages would not sync across devices. It was like I was using POP, an email protocol I abandoned back in 1998. The old QC email would also be slow. It would take me several minutes to receive an email, either through IMAP or Exchange.

After a weekend of usage, I am happy to report that my QC email works like one would expect email to work. Migration was pretty painless, although that might have to do with the extremely limited use I made of Lotus Notes over the years. After following some very detailed instructions from our IT staff, I was completely migrated from Lotus to MyMail within a day.

If you are considering the migration, do it. I especially encourage you to do so if you currently access your QC email, contacts, and calendars through open standards, such as IMAP, CalDAV, etc. instead of the Lotus Notes clients. And hey, at least it’s not GMail.

Fordham and CUNY add Make-up Classes

After Superstorm Sandy cancelled a week’s worth of classes, there was no indication from any of the colleges where I teach that we would be making up classes. But over the last two days, CUNY and Fordham have quietly announced that they will be extending the semester in order to make up the loss days of instruction.

This is the right thing to do. If it is possible to add a few days of classes at the expense of an already long final exam period, then so be it. My Electronic Media class at Fordham was already short enough. Due to some puzzling scheduling, we ended up with only thirteen scheduled weeks of instruction, instead of the customary fourteen, and we would have been down to twelve with last weeks’ cancellation. This will give us the opportunity to cover digital media over two weeks instead of one, as I had to consolidate the two weeks’ worth of material after Sandy wreaked its havoc.

At CUNY, my New Technologies class has been interrupted throughout the entire semester. Although we started in late August, we have met on consecutive Mondays only once: September 24 and October 1. The interruptions have been due to Labor Day (September 3), Rosh Hashanah (September 17), Columbus Day (October 8), and now Superstorm Sandy (October 29). If we add another week at the end of the semester, I can cover the book I dropped from our schedule: Evgeny Morozov’s The Net Delusion, a book students have already bought and can learn a great deal about critizing techno-humanitarianism.

My only peeve about the recent decision to make up the cancelled courses is that they came a little late. I had already condensed my syllabi last week when it became clear that we would not start classes until the Monday after the storm. With the delayed decisions and announcements, I will have revised each of my syllabi three times in the past week. And each time announced to my students of the revisions.

There has been a lot of back-and-forth decisions over the last week over how to handle the unprecedented cancellations. For example, Fordham had announced that classes would resume on Thursday, November 1, but then quickly rescinded that decision and postponed the reopening of its New York City campuses to Monday, November 5. I presume that it did so after fully considering the challenges students, staff and faculty would have with transportation. Similarly, Pratt had cancelled today’s midterm break but then reinstated it after considering the importance of the presidential election.

The above link to Amazon is an affiliate link. If you buy something that link, I will earn a commission fee.

More Closures due to Storm

By now, the string of emergency alerts from my work sites have been trickling in and are beginning to have a pretty predictable pattern.

Here’s the order of the announcements.

  • CUNY announced a complete closure of its campuses, around 7:00 this morning.
  • Around 12:30 PM, Fordham reassures us that everyone and its facilities are unharmed, but that classes are cancelled for Wednesday. That closure directly impacts me since I teach an 8:30 class there.
  • Just before 1:00 PM, NYU also announced a complete closure of classes and activities, although they have established electronics charging stations, provided Internet and health care services at Kimmell and the lower level of Bobst Library.
  • At about 1:45 PM, Pratt Institute, where I was supposed to teach class today, has been cancelled classes for tomorrow as well. However, that is a moot point for me since I only teach there on Tuesdays.

Oh well, back to getting some board games.

CUNY Declares War On QCC English Department

Angus Johnston at Student Activism:

At Queensborough’s English department the primary practical issue with Pathways was its reduction of weekly course hours for composition classes from four to three. This change would cut into students’ class time, require heavier faculty courseloads and — not incidentally — dramatically reduce faculty compensation for teaching composition, a particularly writing and grading intensive class.

The shift from the department’s existing four-hour composition courses to new Pathways-compliant three-hour offerings required a departmental vote, and as it became clear that faculty were disinclined to approve the change, administrators made it known that a failure to approve the Pathways plan would result in harsh consequences.

Pathways is CUNY’s way of standardizing the curriculum across its various campuses. It seems that the English Department at Queensborough Community College wants to maintain a four-hour course, but under Pathways, an English composition course would only earn three credits and, accordingly, would be restricted to three hours per week. The downsizing will undoubtedly hurt students and their progress to write proficiently.1

I am not sure what the constraints are, but it might be possible reduce the credits earned for students. The class could meet for four hours, and teachers earn four contact hours of pay. For example, most of our film courses are four hours in length, but students receive only three credits. When I was an undergraduate, our Film History classes met for nine hours per week (two hours on each Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and ninety minutes on each Tuesday and Thursday) but we only received four credits. 2

But if under Pathways, CUNY insists on maintaining a one-to-one relationship between credits earned and contact hours, then it would be gross reduction in educational quality for students who are already disadvantaged.

  1. Incidentally, it is at CUNY where I have had to do the most amount remedial work in academic writing. I actually enjoy doing so as students have seemed receptive to learning something they can use in all their classes, not just mine. Reducing the emphasis on writing and composition at CUNY will only hurt not help students. ↩

  2. According to the General Catalog, the Film and Media Studies department at UCSB raised the credits earned for the “Film History”, “Advanced Film Analysis”, and “Film Theory” courses to five. The department did so in 2001 given the amount of time a student spends in class and for the amount of extensive writing done in these classes. In my many years teaching, I have yet to teach courses as intensive as these. ↩

New Technologies Fall 2012 Syllabus

The syllabus for my Fall 2012 New Technologies course at CUNY Queens College is now available online.

New Technologies examines the social impact of emerging technologies such as the Internet and new telephonic and audiovisual media. In it, students survey the origins of digital communication and the Internet and engage closely with contemporary scholarship on digital technologies and institutions. We will also consider the impact of the digital revolution on our culture.

Students can enroll through CUNY First.

Textbooks for Fall 2012 New Technologies Class

With the fall semester coming up less than two months away, I had to order the textbooks for my New Technologies class at CUNY Queens College.

The required readings for the course are…

I have kept most of the books from the Fall 2011 class but abandoned the textbooks in favor of creating an environment closer to that of a graduate seminar. To do that, I selected books that make specific and compelling arguments about contemporary digital media. I tried that last year, and we had some brilliant and engaging conversations. If I have to do any remedial explanations of how specific technologies work, such as explaining how the web works, I’ll do that in class as a lecture.

Although the book list might appear long (and expensive), these books are pretty easy read, and it is very easy to procure these books for a reasonable price on the used market. Students with ereaders can get every title for an average price of $10 each.

The above links to Amazon are affiliate links. If you buy something through those links, I will earn a commission fee.

Take a Summer Course with Me

I’m teaching a summer session course at Queens College. The course is Media Studies 300W: Media Criticism. My version of the course will cover current issues in media technology and will focus on a limited number of topics. There will not be any overwhelming amount of material to memorize. Instead, we will read and respond to some very engaging issues in today’s media and technology environment.

This class satisfies the all-important writing requirement, but instead of stretching it out over fourteen grueling weeks, we will be condensing the class into six weeks. And because it’s summer, it will be more relaxed than it is during the fall or spring semesters.

Students will not need to purchase a textbook. We will be using the online research databases, available for free for all registered students, and the open web.

Some of the topics we’re going to address include…

  1. Cinema in the Digital Age
  2. Cable Television and Cord Cutters
  3. Beware of Big Data
  4. Is Google Evil?
  5. Intellectual Property and Digital Media
  6. Open Media and the Commons

The class meets Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday evenings, 5:30 — 7:45 PM, between June 4 and July 16.

To enroll, visit Summer Session website. Be sure to enroll in section 5833.

Update

This class has been cancelled.