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June 26, 2008
New Media Studio Wins 2008 Center of Excellence Award
UMBC's New Media Studio (NMS) has won a prestigious Centers of Excellence Award, presented annually by the New Media Consortium (NMC) during its summer conference.
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| Pictured L to R: Paul Iwancio, Bill Shewbridge and Aaron Weidele. |
Patterned after the MacArthur "Genius Grants," recipients of the NMC Centers of Excellence award are nominated and selected anonymously by one's peers. "This is the biggest award a center like ours could receive" says Shewbridge, who has led the Studio since its creation in 2002. "We are very honored."
In recent years, the Studio has partnered with the Center for Digital Storytelling (CDS) in Berkeley, California, to host digital storytelling workshops on campus, as a way to promote and support its use as a form of creative expression as well as a teaching and learning strategy. In fact, the week before receiving the award at Princetown, Shewbridge and his colleagues completed another digital storytelling workshop with CDS staff, and extended the usual three-day program to a five-day "train the trainer" agenda for participants from last year's workshop (click here for a brief video about the workshop process).
In addition, two UMBC instructors (Jason Loviglio and Beverly Bickel) joined Shewbridge in a separate conference presentation on how they used digital storytelling techniques to incorporate visual assignments in their Spring 2008 courses.
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| In addition to Iwancio and Weidele, other UMBC conference participants who attended the Centers of Excellence award ceremony gathered for a group photo and included (L to R): Adriana Val and Ed Beimfohr (back row); Heather Linville, Polina Vinogradova and Jack Suess (middle row); and Beverly Bickel and Jason Loviglio. |
This year, UMBC joined the Rochester Institute of Technology as 2008 recipients. Past recipients have included Case Western Reserve, Johns Hopkins, UC Berkeley, UT Austin and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
For more information about digital storytelling at UMBC, visit www.umbc.edu/stories. In addition, an email listserve has been created for announcements, tips and FYIs.
Posted by fritz at 12:32 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
June 20, 2008
End of UMBC Modem Services June 2009
UMBC was an early pioneer in offering modem service for Internet connectivity and we are currently among the last universities in Maryland still offering this. Next year, June 30, 2009 will mark the end of UMBC’s dial-up modem service for the campus community. After June 30, 2009 UMBC will no longer provide any dial-up Internet modem service for UMBC faculty, staff or students.
UMBC has offered this free service for more than 15 years. Over that time we have seen modem use decrease dramatically, especially as faster alternate methods such as Cable modems and DSL became commonly available. Unfortunately, as time has passed our modem infrastructure has also aged making them more expensive to maintain. We are now at a point where we would need to make substantial new investments to maintain modem service.
There a number of extremely cost effective alternatives, including a number that support high-speed access. We have listed a number of these options below.
NOTE: These options are only recommendations and are in no way affiliated or supported by the University. It is up to individuals to assess their needs and work with the vendor they feel is appropriate for their situation.
Modems:
www.netzero.net
DSL:
www.verizon.com/dsl
Broadband:www.comcast.com/highspeedoffer
Posted by mikec at 11:06 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack