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Naomi’s Project Ideas

Hello all!

To follow up on our class discussion from last week, here are some of my project ideas!

1) I am very interested in online learning environments, and I would really like to build a website that is an online learning enviornment specifically designed for courses that I teach at the Met Opera Guild. The grand scheme / plan is to create a website in which I (the administrator) am capable of doing most, if not all of the development myself, for several reasons: 1) to save the cost of farming out the actual web development to an external company or contract, 2) so that changes to content can easily be made “in house”, 3) so that the website / learning enviornment as a whole can be something that starts with a small specific goal, but has the capability to grow and be added to over time, and 3) to force me to learn something I have wanted to learn for quite some time. I have experimented with things like wordpress, or moodle (both open-source content management systems), but ultimately, I am looking for something with more flexibility, so that eventually (and here comes the major scope creep), the website can function as a portal for several different online classes, opera education resources, live streaming of events, a volunteer portal (as a non-profit, the guild relies heavily on volunteer power, and managing/training/organizing a volunteer core of over 100 gets complicated, and eventually, it would be nice to do more of that digitally), and digital community building spaces like blogs, chat rooms, discussion boards, etc. So future flexibility is important, but for the purposes of this class project, I am mostly interested in learning how to build the skeleton of the site itself – the content will come later.

2) In terms of smaller projects, I am very interested some smaller, interactive ideas, that may eventually get plugged into the website described in project #1, (but not necessarily). I always find it frustrating in music texts, journal articles, and books, to have to deal with a cd in order to play audio sames of musical excerpts described in a text. So I invision a kind of digital book or digital document, similar to a PDF, but where there are buttons you can click to immediately play an audio track, and that audio track is somehow imbedded into that particular moment of the text. I have not researched yet if software exists to actually create this thing already, but I am also concerned about how people would view it / download it onto their devices. PDF is a pretty standard file type – so I want to be able to create a digital text document that people can download and read on their ipads, tablets, kindles, smart phones – whatever the case may be – and in it, have audio embedded and playable by simply tapping the audio example button as they are reading a page. If this was possible / if I am able to create something that makes it possible, then I can see how it could be applied to other things outside of the average musical text book – like an interactive brochure for lectures, musical events, conference, etc., where little video clips or audio clips can be inserted that correspond to information given in the brochure.

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By Naomi Barrettara – February 9, 2012

About Me and A Project Idea

About Me:

I’m a second year PhD student in Philosophy at the GC, and an Adjunct Instructor at Hunter College and City College.  I’m interested in social and political philosophy, though my interests within that field are still varied.

I’ve just recently quit my job – a Macintosh computer technician – at a company called Tekserve, where I worked for over eight years. This was a much anticipated move, though it still feels really weird not to be there 3-4 times a week. It certainly feels nice, however, to be able to concentrate fully on my schoolwork now.

I am also a musician; I play bass and sing in a band called The Fear And Trembling. If I did not play music regularly I think I would go insane.

 

Project Idea:

1. To create a database for research that also has elements of a blog.  This app (maybe?) would be accessible through a computer, tablet, smartphone, etc., so I guess it would have to be both browser-based and application-based.

The rough format of the database would be:

  1. An archive of user-uploaded material accessible through the database. The material can be tagged however the user sees fit to provide intuitive searching and grouping.
  2. The user will be able to interact with any material that is uploaded; so, in the case of an article, the user will be able to highlight bits of text within the digital file.
  3. The user will also be able to attach the uploaded material to a blog-type interface that is part of the database. This will allow a user to attach a review of an article to the article itself (one example), and when the user searches for the article the attached post will accompany the article. These blog posts can also be tagged for easy retrieval.
  4. Since it may be difficult to get a free digital copy of everything that is needed for research, the site could potentially have the capacity to directly import purchased digital files from Amazon.com or something like that.
  5. Otherwise, the site will also have an import feature for material taken directly from hard storage.
  6. The site could potentially also host the researcher’s work in progress, along with citations.
  7. Ideally, the database content would be stored somewhere in a cloud, with the option for periodic hard backups to a computer that allows a user to work offline and upload the new content when a connection is reestablished. I guess there would be some sort of sync option.

 

I have two other project ideas that I mentioned in class, but they are not as well thought out. I will include them later when I have a better understanding of their function.

 

 

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By Laura Kane – February 9, 2012

Research Project Ideas

 

My project ideas are not as clearly-defined as some of yours, so here is a list of possibilities:

1. Similar to @laurakane, I’ve been thinking about a researching software that will help people study for comprehensive exams like the Orals. This software would be very similar to Scrivener, and do most of what it does already, but with a larger emphasis on a few things (see below). It would also be neat if, unlike Scrivener’s linear organisational structure, this program could be more laterally-structured– notes flowing outwards on a Prezi-like model, and a CommentPress-like function that would allow floating notes. Also, it would have:
– keywords. Scrivener already does this, but I’d like to increase the emphasis on keywords and recurring ideas (esp. re: grouping and sort/find functions), maybe by an automatic recognition software?
– sorting. Related to the emphasis on keywords, this program would be able to pull key quotes out of the notes and research based on recurring keywords, so that you can see all the quotes that relate to, say, “ruins” on one handy-dandy screen and print easily.
– integration with a scanner. Because the really annoying part about studying is the aspect of writing down quotes, it would be neat if this thing came with a pen scanner included for those of us who still like or need to read on paper.

Of course, actually creating/writing such a thing is completely beyond my wildest dreams.

2. The Conference Social
This is a much simpler idea — we’d have a map, and on that map, we’d pin down all the places that academic conferences are happening. I assume it wouldn’t be hard to get this information automatically from discipline-specific CFP lists, and to allow users to sort by discipline to see where and when in the world their conferences are happening. Additionally, each location would link to related cultural and other events (maybe organisers themselves would like to add certain things, as lots of conferences have tie-ins with local theatres, museums etc., for their attendees). Lastly, although I am acutely against things like FourSquare, I suppose it would be nice for those who are interested, to be able to “check in” at conferences for networking purposes.

3. Walking Tours
Who doesn’t like New York? Not tourists! This idea for a website would take tourists out of the Times Sq.-nonsense-gridlock and take them to further-away sections of the city (maybe even, gasp, into the Bronx!). We would provide detailed pdf downloadable maps, for a small fee, which would give you historic and cultural information about neighbourhoods and especially, the best way to get around without getting lost on the subway. The strength of this project would be in its information (people who live in the area giving insight, relatable commentary, up-to-date event listings, customisable information for groups, current photos of the route to make sure ppl don’t get lost) and the relatively low cost. I envision this as something that comes with a mobile app component.

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By ria banerjee – February 9, 2012

About Me & Research Interests

About SKG

I am launching my career as a public health researcher informed by 18 years as working with difficult to reach and vulnerable youth in Austin, Texas and NYC. I began my career as an Americorps volunteer in Austin, TX serving run away and throw away youth. The population shifted from  being largely LGBTQ youth to being primarily drug-using and drug abusing, though they were not mutually exclusive.

This experience was extremely formative. I was only 17 years old myself when I was in this role, and I learned about health education, peer education specifically with hidden populations, community health, partnerships, and working with participants to formulate programming. These lessons I drew from later as I earned a MPH and then worked running peer education and other (mainly) HIV prevention programs in areas most infected/affected in NYC – namely, in the South Bronx, Central and South Brooklyn, and in East Harlem (there are more, but those are the main one’s). Most of this work is with young people of color from 14-18 years old.

I’m now a public health consultant working for the Ford Foundation essentially as a GRA providing background pieces for the Sexuality Reproductive Health and Human Rights Division and for Voces Latinas as their evaluator.

Outside public health, I enjoy martial arts and triathalons.

Research Interests

So we know that teens are really interested in social media (esp. Facebook) [Pew, Rand, and Kaiser Family Foundation all have research indicating this] but there is a dearth of data that captures how young people (I’m interested in youth 16-24 years old) utilize mobile and social media (esp. Facebook) to communicate about sexual and reproductive health (including sexuality as well as sexual health outcomes).

And, we know that negative sexual and reproductive  health (SRH) outcomes persist especially among young people of color in urban areas. These are all key interests of mine.

My Project for this class

In theory, I would love for this project to fit as a component of my dissertation but for the moment, what that will be or look like is fuzzy – and that’s ok.

One idea I do have is to develop a web-based or app mechanism to allow youth to rate their experiences with different agencies and clinics (think yelp). I know of 1 agency that tried to launch something similar, but I’m not sure what came of it.

A second idea that interests me is the dilemma of counting/ monitoring and evaluation of social media interactions. One idea I had was to conduct a qualitative analysis of people’s public Facebook walls that meet certain criterion including conversations around SRH. I’m not sure how to handle this from a quantitative approach.

 

Looking forward to continuing the conversation…

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By Sonia K. González – February 8, 2012

Project ideas…

I’m interested in understanding the meaning of food and food activism to young people (around 18-24), and the environmental and social contexts that shape their experiences. More specifically, I’m interested in learning about the role of young people in food activism and the burgeoning food movement, and to understand first, who are these young food activists and what was their path for becoming activists, and second, to what extent and how are they influencing food policy. Through life story interviews, I’m hoping to understand how young people participate in this new era of food movements, how they perceive these movements, how it influences their understanding of food, the food environment, health, and social justice, and the tools and strategies (ie, social media/technology) they’re employing to impact food policy.

For this project and my research, I’d like to develop some sort of platform to add a technological/visual/media component to the life histories — so that there’s a space for communication and sharing — and so that we (in public health) can begin to develop ways to better collaborate with and engage young people through the use of technology. Some ideas include a blog-like site for young activists to connect (though this will likely have to be closed to the public given IRB?), a web-based participatory mapping project, video journals or a participatory video project, or content analysis of social media tools they utilize.

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By Amy – February 8, 2012

Projecting for the project…

For my project for this course, I would like to embark on the following:

One of my areas of focus in my work at the DOHMh is to monitor the management of services to transitional age youth (16-24 years) who have serious emotional disturbance/serious mental illness (SED/SMI). Presently, the youth that we serve are receiving remedial education and vocational readiness services. While our work has merit, I find that it is lacking as we do not requrie our contractors to assess, coordinate, or serve the youths’ health needs. In fact, literatue suggests that not only are these youth more likely to engage in unhealthy behaviors (smoking, etc), they are far less likely to receive the needed attention than are their peers who do not have SED/SMI.

I recently surveyed the youth that we serve and learned that they are interested in receiving information about and linkage to various health services. For this project I would like to create a forum that will inform and link the youth to available services.

At this point, I am not certain what format/forum I might employ; I remain very open to learning about the variety of approaches, forums, and tools that I might explore. I would be very interested in collaborating with my peers for this project, so I look forward to our discussions about how we might bring that possibility to life.

On a completley different note, I also hope to learn enough to creat a blog page for the students of one of the two classes that I teach at Hunter. During last semester I shared with my then students that we were blogging in Core I and I seemed to turn on their interest in such a forum for communication for our class together. I am convinced that a class blog would enhance our discussions and learning opportunities. Finally, for the either of the classes that I teach at Hunter, I would love to be able to learn about how to introduce and incorporate gaming. I was thoroughly intrigued by our discussion of this platform for learning.

Looking forward-

 

Janice

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By Janice – February 8, 2012

Interface for craft learning – Mei-Ling

Hi all,

As a follow up to our discussion last week, my project idea revolves around creating an interface for traditional craft workers to pass on knowledge and training. One thing I did not mention last week is what I mean by “traditional.” I am using this broadly to encompass, in particular, indigenous cultures which in the past, have tended to be exploited by Western scientific and academic research and collection practices. More recently socially responsibly scholarship is working to repair this damage by, for example,  “digitally repatriating” material culture objects that currently reside in collections and that have otherwise been. unavailable to the cultures that created them and for which they have continued (often sacred) meaning. For example, in Australia programmers created digital access to a database of objects for an aboriginal people, but it was specified to their cultural protocols–including gender and posthumous protocols of access. The software programmers noted how creating this project was extremely different from their training in designing databases, yet appreciated the need for it. Overall this kind of work–including many other dimensions of helping traditional cultures be sustained–is called “cultural heritage management.”

My interests lie one step prior to the objects themselves–their creation within the originating culture, the tactile knowledge–as well as intangible meaning-dimensions–to making culturally significant objects. I would like to see an interface assist in this transmission of knowledge and recording of it. However, because this is often proprietary and/or special in some way to the people creating it, such an interface would likely be an enclosed, private one (intra-net rather than internet). I realize this may be at cross-purposes to more general contemporary online practices of open knowledge, however I am hoping the preface above explains this need. In my “big wish” this interface/portal would provide many services and needs for an entire community of craftspeople, from training to knowledge recording to news and marketing (with some parts open to the public). However, realistically, if I can just get the “kernel” of person to person knowledge exchange “right” I would be very happy. Also I feel that due to the types of users the interface itself must be very friendly, intuitive and even visually attractive and fun.

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By meiling – February 8, 2012

Janice’s brief bio

Hi, below is my brief bio. I will post my project ideas in a separate blog.

I have over two decades of experience in private and city government agencies, each devoted to improving the living circumstances and livelihood of New Yorkers. For the past ten years I have engaged regulators, practitioners, advocates, and consumers in the identification, assessment, review, and development of services to meet public mental hygiene needs. My work has brought me in close contact with consumers facing mental health crises, the contexts of their communities and environmental influences, and the systems designed to provide support.

In my current role at the NYC DOHMH I work in partnership with consumers, families, advocates, and providers  to ensure that all mental hygiene services in New York City meet the highest quality standards for the over 450,000 people in New York City who suffer from mental health and chemical dependency disorders, and those with mental retardation and developmental disabilities. My work is devoted to assessing and contributing to the development of accessible, high quality health care that is both efficient in its use of resources, as well as effective in promoting health and reducing health disparities.

Blog you soon!

Janice

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By Janice – February 8, 2012

PTTV’s Media Conference this weekend

Hey cohort — I’ll be at the Friday keynote of this event if anyone wants to join me!

Being the Media: Designing a Rrradical New Media

Friday and Saturday, February 10 & 11, 2012
The New School, Theresa Lang Community and Student Center
55 West 13th Street, 2nd floor, New York City, Admission: Free
***RSVP REQUIRED for DAY 2 production design challenge***
call 212 229 2436 or email [email protected]

DAY ONE:Radical Media Then and Now

Friday, February 10, 2012 6:30 p.m.-9 p.m.
KEYNOTE Malkia Cyril, executive director of the Center for Media Justice
SCREENING OF PAPER TIGER’S “GREATEST HITS”
PANEL DISCUSSION
Jamilah King, news editor at Colorlines, where she writes about media, politics and technology
Jennifer Pozner, media critic, founder and executive director of Women In Media & News
Andy Bichlbaum YesLab, a genderless, loose-knit association of some 300 impostors worldwide who agree their way into the fortified compounds of commerce
Moderator: Daniela Capistrano DCAP Media, multi-platform producer, brand strategist and youth media consultant

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By Hadassah Damien – February 7, 2012

Two events Feb 10th with Bruce Burgett and Glenn Hendler

 

February 10th there will be two events exploring the work of Bruce Burgett and Glenn Hendler, editors of Keywords for American Cultural Studies.

First, from 12:30-2:00 (in Room 8201.01) Professors Burgett and Hendler will be conducting a seminar exploring the relationship between Keywords and digital pedagogy. In preparation for this workshop, we ask that participants read their introduction to the Keywords volume and two keyword entries from the collection on “Sex” and “Society” (the readings are attached as pdfs below). Also, to get a sense of how the volume has been used in classrooms across the country please also take some time to explore the Keywords website and the Collaboratory (terrific archives of the impact the collection has already had on a range of courses).

At 4pm, in Room 4406, and co-sponsored with the PhD Program in English and the Certificate Program in American Studies, Professors Burgett and Hendler will be offering a lecture on the Keywords project.  (please see the full description at
https://revolutionizingamericanstudies.commons.gc.cuny.edu/)

 

Keywords – Society Glenn Hendler

Keywords – Sex Bruce Burgett

Keywords for American Cultural Studies_[1]

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By Michael Mandiberg – February 6, 2012

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