Academic Commons News

For several months now the CUNY Academic Commons has offered serialized email reports via Google Analytics for our blogging community.  These email reports  include detailed information about the amount of traffic your blog receives including; how many hits occur in a given time window, how long visitors are on your site, and how many pages they visited while at your site.  While this data is often helpful to many in our community we are pleased to announce that we will now be able to offer our community members even greater access to the rich data available through Google Analytics.

The profile filtering system offered by Google Analytics will help us give you access to all data available from Google Analytics about traffic to your blog while protecting the privacy of other community members.  Your profile will allow you to explore and interact with some of the more nuanced data generated by Google not included in the email reports and help you develop strategies to reach your intended audiences.  If you would prefer the email reports we will continue to arrange those.  Please contact Community Facilitator @BrianFoote to set up your profile now and begin exploring the rich information available about your impact on the web.

After your profile has been created please allow several days for Google Analytics to accurately populate your profile before using the data available.

In November of 2011 the CUNY Academic Commons announced that it would begin work on creating a standalone version of the Commons.  With generous support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the encouragement of our friends and colleagues, the CUNY Academic Commons team is delighted to announce that Commons In A Box is now freely available to all through our website, commonsinabox.org, and the WordPress plug-in directory.  We welcome the Modern Language Association as they adopt the Commons In A Box platform and congratulate their launch of the MLA Commons.

For those who are new to the community, or only now learning about Commons In A Box, the platform combines  features originally developed for the CUNY Academic Commons and bundles them to give users of all skill levels the ability to create and host vibrant online communities with complete user control.  Built upon the WordPress and BuddyPress platforms, Commons In A Box, or CBOX, allows the members of a community to create personal profiles, join or create groups to facilitate collaboration, and set up blogs to promote work, events, and conferences.  CBOX also provides:

• Out-of-the-box functionality with an intuitive set-up that guides site administrators through each step of installation.
• A powerful, responsive, highly customizable theme developed for community engagement.
• Responsive design for easy viewing on many devices, including tablets and smartphones.
• Collaborative document creation and file sharing.
• Reply-By-Email functionality for quick, on-the-go communication.
• Compatibility with many other WordPress and BuddyPress themes and plug-ins.
• Expansive wiki options.

The Commons In A Box project looks forward to building a vibrant community of developers and users who will contribute to the growth and innovation that has driven the CUNY Academic Commons and made this project possible.  The CBOX team encourages you to join the community at commonsinabox.org and share your experience with others who are new to the platform.  We invite you to follow CBOX on twitter to stay in touch as we grow and release new versions.

Commons In A Box is the fruit of our community’s extraordinary efforts to build a vibrant, living space on the web.  Through this process we have been given the opportunity to meet and work with the amazing combo of Bowe Frankema and Marshall Sorenson at PressCrew and thank them for their passion, humor, and dedication to bringing this project to life.  The CBOX team would also like to thank the City University of New York, the leadership of CUNY’s Committee on Academic Technology, André Pitanga and the CUNY Graduate Center, the tireless work of the CUNY Academic Commons’ Development Team, the Commons’ Community Team, and all of the proud members of the CUNY Academic Commons.

cc-licensed photo “occupy sandy. 520 clinton avenue.” by flickr user bondidwhat

As we slowly recover from Hurricane Sandy, the need for volunteers has increased. If you are interested in volunteering time, food or other resources, there are many ways you can help.

Occupy Sandy Recovery
Several different organizations involved with the Occupy Wall Street movement have coordinated their efforts to help those who were affected by Hurricane Sandy. The InterOccupy Hub website contains helpful information and updates around efforts to distribute resources and volunteers to different areas throughout New York and New Jersey.

You can follow Occupy Sandy on Twitter and Facebook to stay updated on volunteer opportunities, donation drop off locations, and current on the ground updates. You can also learn more about ways to help by following the #OccupySandy and #SandyVolunteer hashtags on Twitter, created to coordinate information around relief efforts by those involved. Occupy Sandy also created SandyAid, a public list of group accounts tweeting efforts related to Hurricane Sandy. Through these social media channels you can find many opportunities to get involved, from volunteering for neighborhood clean-ups to driving hot meals to families without electricity.

Donate!
If you can’t volunteer, you can still help those affected by Hurricane Sandy by donating greatly needed resources. Here are a few ways you can donate:

• Donate blood to the New York Blood Center.
• Donate to the Red Cross or text REDCROSS to 90999 to make a $10 donation.
• Donate to The Salvation Army Disaster Relief Efforts.
• Through the CUNY Campaign for Voluntary Charitable Giving you can donate to specific charities that are directly involved with Hurricane Sandy relief efforts.
• Donate annual leave to impacted CUNY employees.

For additional ways to help those in need, see CUNY’s Hurricane Relief page. If you know of any other organizations or efforts around Hurricane Sandy recovery, please add them in the comments below or contact the community team at commons@gc.cuny.edu so we can add them to this page.

Photo Credit: Virgin Media apprentices at the Brathay Apprentice Challenge by Apprenticeships.

The Commons team wants to acknowledge efforts made throughout the CUNY community to come together in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, from helping to prepare shelters for the imminent storm, to spreading information and resources through various social media channels. We would like to further extend these efforts and help connect members of the CUNY community – wherever you may be.

The devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy was unprecedented and broke many records, but if there’s something positive to take away it’s how quickly folks throughout the region have come together to help one another. While I’m fortunate enough to write this post from the comfort of my home in Brooklyn, I realize that many of you may be reading this from a computer at your family member’s house or a hotel. Now that most campuses are back up and running, we’ve put together some resources shared from others across CUNY to help makes these challenging times a little easier.

Brooklyn College’s Share-a-Ride Web App
Earlier today, the Commons email account received a message about a ride sharing application created by Brooklyn College.  The web application allows people to enter a ride offer and for others to search offers by campus destination, zip code, time of day, etc.  If you haven’t braved the buses because of pictures you’ve seen of commuters waiting in line for 1-3 hours, you may want to consider using the web app below to find a car pool offer (there are currently over 100 postings):

• Create your carpool offer: http://cuny.is/createcarpooloffer
•  Search existing carpool offers: http://cuny.is/carpool

CUNY Work/Life Program
CUNY has contracted employee support services that can be reached by phone 24 hours a day at 1-800-833-8707. Services and resources for those who were affected by Hurricane Sandy are also available on the web at: http://www.cuny.edu/worklife.

*Update – 11/4/12*
CUNY recently added some additional resources and services for the CUNY community to their website. These include university resources, community resources, and outside agencies offering support and services to students, faculty, and staff dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.

Additional Resources
If you or someone you know needs assistance in the coming days, resources can be found at the FEMA, the American Red Cross Greater New York Region, and NYC311 websites.  Additionally, the New York City Office of Emergency Management website is a good place to obtain current information about recovery efforts, status of transit/transportation and electricity, amongst other information.

Open Lines of Communication
With many mobile networks still down, we’d like to make it easier for those who need help to be able to communicate with those who can provide help. To that end, we encourage you all to leave comments below – whatever they may be. Whether you want to vent about the tree that fell on your car, check-in to tell everyone that you’re alright, or find out if your colleague who lives in Hoboken is OK, please know that the Commons team and the CUNY community is here to listen and help.

If you have any resources or information you would like to add to this post please leave a comment below or contact the community team at commons@gc.cuny.edu.