Seminar 2 Encyclopedia

Seminar Two

Professor: Grazyna Drabik
ITF: Andres Orejuela
Campus: City College
URL: https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/20crossroads/

Students visited 20 crossroads on Broadway and Fifth Avenue. The stops began in lower Manhattan on Wall Street, and arrived at 181st Street in Washington Heights. The stops are arranged in order on the homepage of site, including the name of the street and neighborhood. For each entry, students wrote up a short post about their experience of the location and about the location itself.

Oral Histories: Becoming American

Professor: Nancy Aries
ITF: Julie Fuller
Campus: Baruch College
URL: https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/becomingamerican17/

Students created multi-media oral history stories on each other and also on someone else they know. Their public facing projects integrated long-form text (based on personal interviews) with visual artifacts, audio, moving clips, graphs, maps, and timelines that clarify both the informant's story and the context of the immigrant group which this person represents.

The Peopling of New York

Professor: Stephen Steinberg
ITF: Lindsey Albracht
Campus: Queens College
URL: https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/steinberg17/category/oral-history-project/

For the final project in this Seminar 2, students interviewed a member of their family about an immigration experience. They also reflected on the exercise in a brief statement that accompanied the post.

The goal of the oral history was to consider how some of the more abstract themes of the class actually played out in the particular lives of people that students actually knew. In the reflection, they were asked to make the connection between course themes and the interview, but also to reflect on the experience of interviewing itself.

The professor opted to display these projects on the existing course website rather than asking students to create separate sites or asking me to create something new. I think a site which displayed all of the posts at once (in Aesop, though I know that theme has its issues) and allowing the user to navigate to the histories that interested them would have been a better design choice, because the histories of students who posted early are a bit buried. But overall, I think the reflections mostly demonstrate that students met the goal of the assignment.

Here to Stay NYC

Professor: Lina Newton
ITF: Tommy Wu
Campus: Hunter College
URL: https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/heretostaynyc/

This is a public-facing site for the class (in addition to a class site for administration). I'm using the Kerouac theme here and I have mixed feelings about it. Aesthetically, I think it looks great but there are also some bugs and limitations (if students don't want to use CSS). Overall, I would recommend it because the student groups took ownership of the site and spent a lot time perfecting their profile pages. They seemed to be proud of what they have produced. I think this would be a good example for future students.

Peopling NYC: Siegel 2015

Professor: Jessica Siegel
ITF: Tahir Butt
Campus: Brooklyn College
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/siegel15/

This course website comprised walking tours of immigrant neighborhoods, immigration narratives, worker profiles, etc.

Exceptional NYC

Professor: Lina Newton
ITF: Christina Nadler
Campus: Hunter College
URL: https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/exceptionalnyc/

This is a site created by Prof Lina Newton’s Seminar 2 course–the Peopling of New York City.

Students worked in groups throughout the semester to undertake research on 5 immigrant groups–Chinese, Haitian, Dominican, Russian and Mexican. In these posts you can find the key findings of the research, statistical profiles, and researched narratives on the history of the immigrant group’s migration & settlement.

Enjoy exploring the projects on the exceptional histories of NYC residents!

NYC’s D Train

Professor: Nancy Aries
ITF: Owen Toews
Campus: Baruch College
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/aries2014finalproject/

In Spring 2014, professor Nancy Aries’ CUNY Baruch/Macaulay Honors seminar studied the diverse neighborhoods linked by New York City’s D Train. The class broke into small teams, each researching one of seven neighborhoods. The primary purpose of the site is to bring together the seven neighborhood studies, with links to individual sites for each neighborhood (students decided to use the same theme for each of their sites, which gave them the united aesthetic they wanted, but limited some groups in what they could do). The secondary purpose of the site is to host a map displaying the seven stops along the D train. The map includes bubbles displaying photos and basic information for each stop, giving a nice overview of the entire project. However, the way the Google map embed displays makes it a bit difficult to see all this information at once. Students chose the ever-popular sliding doors theme to create a colorful, engaging snapshot of human life on the D train.

The Peopling of New York City

Professor: Ramona Hernandez
ITF: Aaron Kendall
Campus: City College
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/hernandez2014/

This Seminar 2 website compares various aspects of two unique neighborhoods in New York City, Flushing and Washington Heights/Harlem. Several topics are discussed, including transportation, food, music and health.

Although the site was envisioned as a comparison between two neighborhoods, since groups were free to choose any topic from either neighborhood, instead of both neighborhoods, the result is more of a summary of various cultural aspects of each neighborhood.

The website is organized in a clear manner, with introdctory text and the option of choosing which neighborhood and topic the user would like to explore further. The use of media is somewhat limited, with a lot of very small images, and is lacking in video/audio that might help the user get a better idea of the feel of the neighborhoods.

Overall, the students did a fine job of researching their topics and presenting the information in a clear and concise manner.

The Stories of Us: Arriving and Adjusting in New York City

Professor: Els de Graauw
ITF: Ben Miller
Campus: Baruch College
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/degraauw13/

The site, like the course it emerged from, focuses on how immigrant groups have integrated or not integrated into American and New York society. Various site sections — linked in the site’s top navigation bar — highlight a number of common projects: a brief biography and photo from each of the site’s authors; audio-recorded immigration stories from the authors, shared and embedded via SoundCloud, which allows for timed comments within the audio stream; statistical profiles of five major immigrant groups in New York, based in part on recent ACS survey data; and representative excerpts from interviews with individual immigrants, organized according to their countries of origin. A consistent visual style to the data figures and other visuals on the site contribute to a sense of unity across these various sections.

The Peopling of East Broadway

Professor: Ken Guest
ITF: Owen Toews
Campus: Baruch College
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/guest2013/

This site displays students’ research findings in a brief, visually attractive way. It allows students to share multi-media creations, such as video, photography, and visual presentations. The site functions as a static, outward-facing exhibition of student work, rather than as an evolving, interactive space for students to share and communicate over time. Because of the way the assignment was structured – students were each assigned segments of the East Broadway strip to research and report back on – gathering their work together on this site conveys an overall sense of place produced by students in collaboration over the course of the semester.

Staten Island: Ethnic Foodways and Food Deserts

Professor: Catherine Lavender
ITF: Scott Henkle
Campus: College of Staten Island
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/peoplingofnycspring2013/

Most people don’t think of Staten Island as part of NYC, or associate it with the rich cultural diversity commonly associated with the “Big Apple.” However, just a ferry ride across the harbor, Staten Island resonates with the culture of the city, and in its own unique way. Staten Island also has a rich food history. Each immigrant group has brought with it unique tastes and flavors from around the world. This site explores the foods of Staten Island, and the way in which its islanders eat, giving special attention to food deserts in the past twenty years.

Staten Island Ethnic Foodways and Food Deserts

Professor: Michael Batson
ITF: Kamili Posey
Campus: College of Staten Island
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/peoplingofnycspring2013/

This project marks a collaboration between Michael Batson´s and Catherine Lavender´s Seminar 2 course. This project investigates 12 ethnic food communities on Staten Island and gives individuals familiar with the rich cultural diversity of New York City a chance to see that diversity through the often overlooked lens of Staten Island. The students for the course served as the primary researchers for the site and did firsthand fieldwork in the following communities: Dominican, German, Greek, Irish, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Russian, Sri Lankan, South Korean, Ukrainian. Some work was done investigating Staten Island´s West African community, but more country-specific work should probably be done here. We hope you enjoy the site!

The Peopling of New York

Professor: Peter Vellon
ITF: Caroline Erb
Campus: Queens College
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/vellon13/finalprojects/

During the Spring 2013 semester, the students in Professor Peter Vellon’s Seminar 2 class researched the relationship between immigration and migration, race, and class on the Lower East Side’s identity. They translated their research into websites geared toward the general public with the help of the course’s Instructional Technology Fellow, Caroline Erb-Medina. Students were divided into groups to focus on the history, labor, food, culture, and demographics of different ethnic groups on the Lower East Side. Along with their research, students also learned how to customize a WordPress site. Every student participated in making the main design decisions for their sites. Each group incorporated tools including Google Maps, iMovie, iPhoto, and embedded music on their sites.

The Peopling of New York City

Professor: Gabriel Haslip-Viera
ITF: Aaron Kendall
Campus: City College
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/haslipviera2013/

Students investigated the role of immigration and migration in the shaping of New York’s identity – past, present, and future, through oral history interviews and neighborhood research projects. The projects were carried out individually and with little structuring, which made the website content too broad in my opinion. Next time around I would suggest the students do the project in groups and focus on a few particular issues related to immigration and migration.

The Peopling of New York: There's An App For That!

Professor: Catherine Lavender
ITF: Scott Henkle
Campus: Staten Island
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/lavenderspring2011finalproject/

Overview:
At CSI, Prof Catherine Lavender’s class divided into groups to study different ethnic communities in NYC. Working with ITF Scott Henkle, each group completed a site, and they were all collected on a main class site. Groups studied Egyptian, Polish, Ukrainian, Caribbean, Korean, Sri Lankan, Dominican, and Mexican communities. Groups took different approaches to their material, but most focused on the experiences of immigrant groups in Staten Island and included maps, interviews, and visits to restaurants.

One City, Many Nations

Professor: Els de Graauw
ITF: Emily Sherwood
Campus: Baruch
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/degraauw11/

Overview:
Professor Els de Graauw of Baruch and ITF Emily Sherwood produced a site with the theme One City, Many Nations. Their site contains information about Dominicans, Chinese, Mexicans, Haitians, Russians, and uses maps, interviews, statistical analysis as well as personal reflections from students about their work and their own family histories. Emily also made use of custom CSS capabilities to tailor the capabilities of the site’s theme.