Hispanic Educational Technology Services (HETS) — the first bilingual consortium dedicated to serving the higher education needs of Hispanic communities—awarded Queensborough Community College “Best Practices in Teaching and Learning Through Technology,” at the recent Best Practices Showcase conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The award— for the proposal entitled, Culture and Family: The Digital Storytelling Project — recognizes Queensborough’s outstanding vision and innovation in the incorporation of technology in higher education.
In a special presentation of the Digital Storytelling project, students from Basic Educational Skills, English, and Speech Communications and Theatre Arts collaborated on a wiki, creating multi-media digital stories incorporating images, film, music, voice and text. The Basic Education and English classes focused on the development of writing skills while the Theatre Arts class created performance pieces from fellow students’ writings in the form of vlogs (video logs). An important component of the wiki project featured performance students posting interview questions for the writing students in order to make their choices as actors. This exercise also allowed the writers an opportunity to clarify their ideas. This interdisciplinary project created a virtual community of learners.
“Learning through their native digital language helps all students make connections across academic disciplines and creates a sense of belonging and meaning,” says Michele Cuomo, Assistant Dean of Academic Affairs, and Associate Professor of Speech Communications and Theatre Arts. Professor Cuomo is also the author of the award-winning proposal, known at Queensborough as the Student Interdisciplinary Wiki Project.
Ghetto Home World, by Queensborough students Kelsey Velilla and Billy Jno Hope; and Memories of My Mother, by Kelsey Velilla — presented at the conference — are examples of vlogs which celebrate and reflect on students’ experiences as Hispanics. Other project teams were comprised of Basic Skills and English Department students, partnered with students in History, Sociology, and Education. Queensborough seeks to expand this model to other educational institutions.
Queensborough Community College, a College of The City University of New York, is celebrating its 50th Anniversary during the 2009-10 academic year, along with the launch of the Freshman Academies and the opening of the new Kupferberg Holocaust Resource Center. Queensborough, located on a picturesque 37-acre site in Bayside, Queens, offers a rich liberal arts and science curriculum, as well as career and pre-professional courses. Over half of the faculty holds doctorates compared with 21% of faculty in other community colleges nationwide. Comprising one of the most diverse populations of any college in the U.S., over 15,000 students pursue an Associate degree or Certificate program and another 10,000 students of all ages attend continuing education programs. Among the campus’s prized resources are the Kupferberg Holocaust Resource Center, the QCC Art Gallery, and the Queensborough Performing Arts Center (QPAC), created to stimulate ideas and intellectual curiosity while exposing students and the public to culture and the arts. Please visit our website at qcc.cuny.edu.
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