the blog animal, ZOE, blogfessor number one.

For the second straight year, we’re awarding the Blogfessor of the Year Award to Zoe Sheehan Saldana, of Baruch’s Fine and Performing Arts Department. The award comes with priority support from the Schwartz Institute on all online publishing endeavors. Of course, Zoe already has that because she’s so awesome.

Zoe developed three sites on Blogs@Baruch this academic year.  Last Fall, she did a Do-it-Yourself Publishing site that used FeedWordPress to syndicate nineteen individual journals where students documented making their own books from scratch (some digital, some not).

This Spring, she used a site in her Basic Graphic Communication course… here’s a description of her course and how she used her course blog from her “About” page:

…this course

This course introduces the graphic design process and methodology. Conceptual and creative thinking is stressed and understood through problem-solving assignments based on research, readings, and classroom demonstrations. The student is introduced to graphic design principles and exposed to historical and contemporary models and current standards of advertising and design. The Macintosh computer is included as the primary graphic design environment. This class is a prerequisite for all advanced Graphic Communication courses. Complete course guide available here, as a PDF file.

…this blog

This blog is a venue for presenting, exploring, and discussing work, ideas, and topics pertaining to the course.

And, finally, together we developed a site for the Focus on Photography Exhibit which served initially as a processing space for members of the Baruch community to submit photos that they wished to be considered for a physical exhibit (which opened last week at the Mishkin Gallery).  The site’s since evolved into an online companion displaying close to 200 images submitted by Baruch students, faculty, and staff.  The submissions process used the TDO Mini Forms plugin to collect information from applicants, allow them to upload their images, and then it published those images to password protected pages where the exhibit judges could asses them. After decisions had been made about which images were accepted for the physical exhibit and which were not, Zoe hacked the Monotone WordPress theme (ideal for photo blogging) to create the online exhibit, which will live beyond the one at Miskhin. The amazing photographic ability of Baruch folks is a topic for another post, but I encourage you to take your time and click through the exhibit to see the fantastic images these folks have captured.

What’s so great about Zoe, beyond her gracious personality and charm, is that she’s exactly what an educational technologist like me needs to get better at what I do: someone who asks questions that I don’t know the answers to, patiently awaits the answer, and works to arrive at a consensus around what can be done with the tools, time, and resources available.  She’s a great collaborator and a creative teacher.  And, as she showed in talks she gave at last year’s CUNY WordCampEd and this year at the Baruch Teaching and Technology Conference, she has a strong grasp of the pedagogical, political, and philosophical impulse behind what we’re trying to do with educational technology at the Schwartz Institute.  As her course blogs and her own art show, she’s an O.E.: Original Edupunk, and both Baruch and the Schwartz Institute are lucky to have her around.

image credit: lumax art