Allison Daugila is a MA student in the Digital Humanities program at the CUNY Graduate Center with focus in Digital Pedagogy. She holds a Bachelors degree in Media Studies from Hunter College and has spent many years creating and facilitating trainings of all kinds for tech companies. Allison’s passion for teaching stems from her youth which was filled with dance and musical performance, which ultimately led her to a decade long teaching stint for Apple. This is where she first became obsessed with software studies, human-computer interaction and accessibility. Allison has a great deal of experience working with people of all ages, abilities and cultural backgrounds and is a professional group fitness instructor. Allison is an ambassador of accessibility in her day to day life, whether that is in technology, fitness or food! Provided that Allison is dedicated to supporting her community as a whole, she functioned as the lead outreach for the Community Fridge Archive where she was able to put her digital media skills and warm personality to use in order to promote awareness and raise funds for this incredible project. She also supported the development of the site overall in Omeka where she took a fine tooth comb and ensured the platform was accessible by all (or most) human beings.
Author Archives: Allison
NYCDH-Week Reflection Hybrid Teaching: Tips, Tricks, and (Productive) Fails
NYCDH-Week Reflection Hybrid Teaching: Tips, Tricks, and (Productive) Fails
As a student of Digital Pedagogy here at the Graduate Center, my decision to attend yet another teaching workshop should come as no surprise to you! The session was led on Friday at Feb 12th at 3pm by Marina Hassapopoulou, an Assistant Professor of Cinema Studies at NYU and she put together an amalgam of tips, tricks and new platforms with the centralized goal of aiding hybrid teaching environments. As a an adjunct teacher of sorts for over a decade, I was really impressed with the amount of new content she had to offer us. Not only did she share some interesting new software platforms to share our virtual trainings on (some of which I will detail below), she also gave us some great analog teaching ideas that don’t involve the computer at all! I thought I would highlight two of the items that really caught my attention in this session that could support us in our collaboration with each other in our praxis course:
Thinglink: Thing link allows you to take still images and annotate or link portions of the image to additional learning (or any form of media) content. When the student hovers their cursor over the part of the image that contains the linked item, a small pop-up appears which offers the opportunity to ‘learn more’. This tool clearly allows for greater interactivity between students and content that’s hosted online, but that’s also the draw back at the same time. To be clear, your media has to be hosted online somewhere for this to work. Although this platform is free for students with a teacher account, it does beg the question of where teachers host their own content. Teachers will also need to pay for an account but their students may join your Thinglink page for free.
DebateGraph: The other most notable platform (at least for me!) was Debate Graph, which is basically free digital mind mapping software. Again, the opportunities seem endless with this one but what I loved most about it is that you can really clarify ideas or arguments with it in a meaningful, interactive and FREE way! It’s a little old school looking and that in itself felt intimidating to invest my time in, but I am super excited to check this one out as well.
There were at least a dozen different sites mentioned in this session similar to the ones I’ve detailed above and some of them any GC student would already know about. For example, hypothes.is was mentioned and I think we all know by know that it’s great for collaborative annotating and shared reading experiences. I strongly encourage everyone to take a look at the link of teaching resources to discover more on their own that the professor kindly shared to attendees. The last thing I will share is that she gave us some really practical tips for keeping students engaged from their desk space at home. For example, she offered us ideas about taking virtual field trips within students homes, we revisited the old concept of show and tell and even sharing physical drawings on pieces of paper. It reminded me that using our hands off of a mousepad and a keyboard can still be possible in these pandemic days!
I got skill(s)!
Hey everyone, you can call me Allison and my pronouns are she/they. I am at the beginning of my second semester here at the CUNY Graduate Center where I am in pursuit of a Masters Degree in the Digital Humanities with focus in Digital Pedagogy. As far as my previous academic studies are concerned, I have an Associates Degree in the Humanities from Brookdale Community College in Lincroft, New Jersey where I took courses in philosophy, advanced public speaking and music performance after high school. My background is in dance, singing and musical performance as a youngin’. When I transferred to Hunter College, I decided to get my Bachelors Degree in Media Studies with a focus on Web Production instead and graduated in 2015. Some highlights of my skill set are technical training, video and audio editing, design, usability testing, accessibility, patience and mindfulness. I’ve spent most of my working life supporting software, either in tech support/training or in it’s development, but usually on the people side of things. I’m also a yoga and meditation instructor still flowing on zoom all throughout the pandemic with people from all over the world.
Outreach: I feel that I am quite a sociable person. I have formerly worn a marketing hat and have experience in teaching for many, many years. The one thing I can share here is that I have a small business, so I would be happy to promote any projects to my small email list and on my social media outlets. I have also lived in NYC for over ten years and I am decently connected to the wellness and tech support communities. I have always been a people person, I’ve worked in sales and I have made cold calls before! I am not afraid to ask questions to strangers. I am not saying I am super excited to do this type of work during covid-times, however.
Project manager: My experience here lies mostly in marketing and software/product launch projects, which is only about ~5 years worth or so. I will share that it is not my preference to manage projects, as I have some notorious trouble in speaking up to people whom I would consider colleages. I am excellent at coordinating small events and give aways.
Designer/UX: I have the most experience here, but nothing technical/coding wise, it is mostly all in testing the usability of a product or noticing how unusable things are and providing feedback to product managers over the years of working in tech. I have taken some design courses in my undergrad and here at the Grad Center and am extremely competent in designing in keynote and pages, I would vote myself 10/10 stars with that software. I am strong with photography, typeface and overall production of media projects. I helped test and further the development of a ride sharing app for a couple of years in a start up, I have strong competency in using screen reader software and other accessibility features of Macs. #accessibility
Research: I would say I am extremly competent in researching things, but my problem is that I lack organization as I research. I would like to grow in this area. Fun fact, I’ve wrote a final paper on Google’s domination of the search engine market place back in 2015 and got an A+!
