Hello Commons!

I can’t tell if I’m having more fun now while we wait for the impending debt ceiling explosion or back in May when we had that eschaton party.  To their credit, the end of the world folks in May had awesome vans and folks running around with clip boards.  This particular Newscycle of Doom ™ has its own bright spots as well.  My favorite so far is John Boehner suggesting that he “didn’t sign up for going mano a mano with the president.”  Yes John, I’m sure it just feels terrible doing the bidding of some Koch brothers hacks when all you really want to do is sit back and let those tobacco checks roll in.  Tea Party indeed.  Anyhow, you don’t need me to point out the absurdity of Washington so we’ll keep it local, like, Commons local.

First up, as near as I can tell we picked up 3 new blogs in the last week or so and all of them hit the ground running.  Catherine Lewis @CLewis has a really sharp blog up at Design+Popcorn.  I missed the Big Bambu exhibit at the Met!  The worst part is that I didn’t even know it was running.  In her post on the exhibit she ties it back to working with her students and trying to drive their creative interests.  I think Catherine picked up on a interesting thread that I’d love to hear more from the Commons:  How does the city inspire your pedagogy?

William Ashton @billashton has a great new blog up.  Calling to mind that ever-vigilant gargoyle Orwell, William’s latest is called ‘The Sound of the Stick’ and looks to drum up some conversation about advertising.  Can’t wait to watch this blog grow.  I’m also oddly excited about the return of MadMen all of the sudden. Also – bonus points for the Biggie Smalls reference.  Ill.

Florian Lengyel @Lengyel has an eponymous blog up working out some serious math business.  I actually have no idea if that’s hard math or just what the calculus kids eat for breakfast but I love seeing a blog here on the Commons for it.  Over the last year we’ve had a big influx of math faculty and they have a few robust groups going.  My hope is that in the coming year we’ll see more meta-math blogs pop up talking about some of the difficulties and joys of teaching math at CUNY.

For all you new blogs – Welcome to the Thunderdome!

It wasn’t all green blogs last week though.  Allie Verbovetskaya @alevtina posted about what she’s learning from her students about their research abilities.  The post asks some tough questions about what we should teaching students about research and how tools like Google are something of a moving goal post when it comes to integrity.  I think it’s safe to say this is something we’re dealing with institutionally and a forum like the Commons is good place to keep that dialogue up.

The Games folks were on a roll this week.  Andrew Boyarsky @ABoyarsky shared a great TED talk and pointed out some surprising numbers about how ‘games’ of all stripes are out in the world.   Carlos Hernandez @carlos, writing for the CUNY Games Network looked at the passionate debate surrounding Jane McGonigal’s book Reality is Broken.

Finally this week we salute our devoted systems admin André Pitanga.  He’s the guy with the bucket throwing the water overboard while the rest of us link to youtube videos.  Thanks for keeping us afloat!

Till next week.