Welcome to the
NSCC Burridge Campus
MindSeed Design Team
Applied Personal Portfolio Learning Education System Website
We are just learning, but feel free to snoop around. It is not complete, but we're working on it. Come back often as we hope to make this an effective learning tool for students at NSCC.
UPDATES (May 2011)
MindSeed Design website (May 2011)
The new Joomla! website is now the official MindSeed Design website and can be accessed at http://www.mindseed.ca/
UPDATE: YDC/NSCC RMP Report
This is the same report with a couple references to YDC, error fix and extra details in the reccomendations. Download report here.
YDC suspends operations. (Wednesday, April 27th 2011)
The Board of Directors of the Yarmouth Development Corporation has voted to suspend the Corporation’s operations until June of this year. YDC President Chris Atwood says because Yarmouth town council decided not to approve interim funding for the YDC, the Board had little choice but to close up its offices and lay off staff. Atwood did say that operations could start up again if the council passes their budget at the June meeting. Atwood says the decision affects promotions for downtown businesses, insurance for festivals such as Seafest and the Shark Scramble, Main Street flower baskets, welcoming posters and promotional material for conventions. [CJLS]
YDC/NSCC Reverse Mentoring Partnership - 2011 Progress Report (April 11th 2011)
This is our first report on this project. Download here.
YDC/NSCC Reverse Mentoring Partnership (March 2011)
We're gonna' be in pictures! Watch EastLink Magazine on your local EastLink TV channel starting Sunday 27 March 2011 at 7:00 pm! We get four minutes of fame for the partnership with interviews onsite with the owner of Tooie's Country Crafts and NSCC Burridge Campus featuring two IT Systems Management/Networking learners. Another great community service learning project where we get a win-win... the business owners gain new skills in computers and social networking and the learners apply their skills in the "real world". Check out the YDC/NSCC Reverse Mentoring Partnership page here.
Burridge IT Grads attracting attention (March 2011)
Register.com (now Web.com) continues to be NSCC Burridge Campus' largest IT employer and an invaluable partner in the education and employment of our learners.
Keane, a Boston headquartered Fortune 500 company with a large Halifax office was recently bought out by NTT Data from Japan and has hired our grads in the past and will continue to do so. One of my former students was sent to India to deliver training for Keane!
For the first time, last year Research in Motion (RIM) hired one of our grads and have already offered five more IT students jobs, months before graduating. They, along with NSCC, Register.com and TPI Mouse Voyages also participated in a first semester job interview project to meet one of the Professional Development learning outcomes. It lets the employers "test-drive" a student and gives learners a chance to interview in front of potential employers, rather than having a mock interview... another win-win! In our recent visit to RIM, the recruiter confessed that they were very impressed with the quality of student and were actively seeking more... see Field Trip 2011 below.
There are also a number of local businesses who employ our IT gads, like Staples, Vaughan Assurance, Credit Union and others. Our IT gads and grads to be are in high demand! Thank you all for being a part of building Nova Scotia's economy and quality of life through education and innovation.
MindSeed U! is now MindSeed Tutorials! (March 2011)
We have changed the name of our tutorial website to better reflect what it is, a tutorial website and not a university. The MindSeed Design Team 2011 has also updated the website as a content management system (CMS) with a new look and feel. Please check out MindSeed Tutorials!
The SPOT (March 2011)
Members of the MindSeed Design Team have updated The SPOT website to a CMS and are eagerly awaiting the official launch... stay tuned! UPDATE: The SPOT website is live. See www.the-spot.ca
NSCC Burridge Campus Student Association Website (March 2011)
The IT Web Development Program's Capstone Project for 2011 is the NSCC Burridge Campus Student Association Website. It is built as a CMS and should be a useful tool for the SA for a long time to come. Congratulations to the MindSeed Design Team, the ITW class of 2011; Desmond Doucette, Lena Fevens, Alex Poole, Emily Scott and Garrison Whynot. Great job team! See website here.
Stepping Stones Computer Training (March 2011)
We have just started a new project with Mike Rochester, NSCC Burridge Campus Faculty, Health and Human Services. For one hour a week we tutor and mentor ten young adults that are part of the Stepping Stones Program. Second year IT students prepare and deliver basic computer and software training and provide one-on-one guidance for these young learners. We hope to be able to continue to the end of the semester.
Learner posts... (March 2011)
While all MindSeed Design Team members have posting capabilities on certain parts of this website—Resources and Examples—very few have contributed here. It may be due to the fact that we are together 15 hours a week in a lab and I see them unofficially in between... so there is no lack of communication or accessibility. They often send me emails or tell me about great resources, but don't post them. Somehow we have to make this site feel like their own applied personal portfolio learning education system... more like a social network than a educational website... the battle continues...
Joomla! (March 2011)
The MindSeed Design website built on the Joomla! platform is a success. It is easy to setup, easy to use, powerful and flexible. Joomla! website development is now firmly entrenched in our web development courses here at NSCC Burridge Campus. We also experiment with other CMSs. UPDATE: The new Joomla! website is now the official MindSeed Design website and can be accessed at www.mindssed.ca
Field Trip 2011 (March 2011)
The MindSeed Design Team was in Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM) Tuesday 15 March 2011 on a well deserved field trip. We left the campus at 7:00 am and only returned at 9:00 pm that night. Our first stop was the new NSCC Waterfront Campus in Dartmouth. We had arranged a tour by Academic Chair Applied Arts & New Media, Douglas Barnes. What a great host... he took us everywhere around the campus and showed us various classrooms, labs, shops and studios.
We were then off to see Research in Motion (RIM). Very fortified, but good visit. We were only allowed to go about 20 meters inside the building... basically walked straight in and sat down next to their cafeteria. We were hosted by Shaun Penny and David Meister, Recruiters for RIM. They were both very knowledgeable and helpful... and, almost begging for our learners to apply for jobs!
Same for Keane (an NTT DATA Company), our final stop on our field trip. My contact at Keane, Recruiter Marsha White, convinced a top executive at the Halifax office to give us the short version of their new employee orientation. It was great! They shared with us some new technology they were developing and maintaining, where you could monitor the performance of an oil well through a website from anywhere in the world!
We found out the IT industry is alive and well in NS and they are less concerned about the specific technologies you know as to what kind of person you are and that you are excited about working in IT. What a great trip.
Seventh Experiment (November 2010)
Reverse Mentoring Partnership
The Yarmouth Development Corporation (YDC) Promotions Committee and Nova Scotia Community College (NSCC) Burridge Campus are partnering to do a Reverse Mentoring Information Technology (IT) Project.
This project will place second year NSCC IT students in various Downtown businesses who would like to enhance existing computer skills or learn new skills that would be useful to their business.
Business owners can learn more about social media such as Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and eBlasts (formatted email advertising). Not-for-Profit organizations can have a free website built for them and learn how to manage it. NSCC is also looking for businesses willing to take on work term placements (learners work in your business for between five and ten weeks for free, usually from mid March to late May).
The opportunities are endless and it is all FREE! You let us know what days and times are good for you and NSCC will assign a student to work with you in half hour sessions until you feel comfortable you can handle it yourself.
Marcel d’Entremont, Faculty Advisor IT Web Development, School of Applied Arts & New Media at NSCC Burridge Campus will oversee the selection and placement of students. NSCC Burridge Campus believes in giving back to the community. They are dedicated to community service and applied learning. The Reverse Mentoring Partnership will be an on-going project during the school year and will be made available to you each year.
Check out the YDC/NSCC Reverse Mentoring Partnership here.
Sixth Experiment (March 2010)
Welcome to MindSeed U!
Maybe you've wondered how to perform common tasks on your computer but you didn't know who to ask. Or, maybe you were afraid that you were the only person who didn't know how and didn't want to embarrass yourself by asking (though, that shouldn't stop you; everyone has to learn somehow).
If this sounds like you, you've come to the right place. We here at MindSeed U have posted several video tutorials to show you how to do things like change your desktop wallpaper, create a MS Word table, do a web search or even set up a virtual private network (VPN).
If you have tutorials you would like to see on MindSeed U, just email the MindSeed Design Team at CLOAKING and we will try to accommodate your requests.
So, come in and have a look around! See: http://tutorials.mindseed.ca/
Fifth Experiment
I have given access to all second year Information Technology Web Development (ITW) students and made them all publishers. This means they can now edit content in certain areas. I have invited industry to participate as well, but no one has replied to this request. I have reactivated the MindSeed Design Help Desk to see if we can use this as a "task manager" or productivity tool.
Fourth Experiment
I am installing and configuring a MindSeed Help Desk through a Joomla! plug-in. This will be used by students from my CSTN4015 Help Desk and Customer Support course, hopefully through The SPOT, as a hands-on final project. They will be required to monitor the MindSeed Help Desk website, collect assigned tickets and find answers and solutions. I have broken up the MindSeed Help Desk in different departments and categories and will also have to create users for the class. All MindSeed Help Desk reps will be assigned specific areas, areas in which they feel comfortable answering the questions.
Third Experiment
I am slowly converting MindSeed to a wiki and have removed the blog. It was not working properly and I think the wiki would serve us better. I have started putting up content and you should have access to do the same. Feel free to contribute. Once we are satisfied it works, I want to invite industry to participate.
Our second experiment
We have a MindSeed Design Blog! Our blog, for testing purposes, is only available to registered users. The website while live on the Internet is not publicized and basically private. You have to be a registered user to see this blog and other features, like menu items. I have created your accounts for you and sent out an email. If you have not received the email, please get in touch with me.
Click on the bottom link on the left in the main menu to go to the blog. Keep your one and zeros dry!
UPDATE: The Blog has been disabled.
Our First Joomla! Experiment
This Joomla! website only took me a few hours to setup, yet it is jammed packed full of functionality. It is a complete content management system (CMS) running on XHTML/CSS and PHP/MySQL. It took me six hours to install and learn the software, three to four hours to setup this website and all weekend to figure out how to make my own templates (still not done learning, but especially templates). I get it on a basic level and have created my own (empty) Joomla! template from scratch! I consider myself a nube.
MindSeed Design Team
NSCC Burridge Campus
