Wired Classrooms Update:
New Rooms, Easier Reservations

New Classrooms

The University has expanded the inventory of "wired" (technology-equipped) classrooms available to the NYU community. Over the winter recess, two newly acquired floors at 194 Mercer Street—across from the Coles Sports Center—were converted into 16 wired lecture rooms and a hands-on computer classroom. ITS Academic Computing Services and NYU Campus Media participated in the design and development of this new facility, jointly staffing an on-site Tech-Team in support of faculty who use these classrooms.

Figure #1 - The 194 Mercer Street Lecture Room.

Lecture and Presentation Rooms

The 16 new wired lecture and presentation rooms at 194 Mercer Street have various seating capacities ranging from 20 to 70 people and were designed to allow faculty easy access to technology. The rooms are equipped with ceiling-mounted media projectors and sound systems. At the heart of each room is a podium designed by NYU Campus Media that provides a wide range of media playback equipment and a networked Windows computer. These computers provide a basic suite of presentation and multimedia software. Each podium also has network, display and power connections for a laptop computer.

ITS manages the computers in these rooms in a manner consistent with copyright and licensing practices. If you have a comment or a request for software to use in one of these rooms, please send e-mail to: its.classroom.requests@nyu.edu.

To reserve a lecture room, contact NYU Room Scheduling and Assignments at 1-212-998-4220. For detailed information about the types of in-room media equipment and training available through NYU Campus Media, see http://www.nyu.edu/campusmedia/.

New Hands-on Computer Classroom

The newest ITS-managed, hands-on computer classroom is located in room 304 of 194 Mercer Street. The classroom can accommodate up to thirty students. Each seat has a Gateway Profile 4L Windows computer with 2.5 GHz Pentium 4 processor, 512MB of memory, 17-inch display, CD-RW and floppy drive. An exciting new feature of this room is the Sympodium L-150 from SMART Technologies (http://smarttech.com). It incorporates the same SMART Board technology currently used in other ITS hands-on classrooms in a podium-mounted, touch-sensitive 15-inch display. Faculty will now have the freedom to demonstrate software and annotate the computer screen without blocking students' view, thanks to a ceiling-mounted media projector and an 8'x10' screen. With the addition of wall-mounted speakers and zone lighting, this room will help deliver an excellent learning experience.

Figure #2 - The SMART Board Podium at 194 Mercer Street.

Reserving ITS-Managed Classrooms

ITS-managed, hands-on classrooms are located in three of the ITS computer labs (http://www.nyu.edu/its/labs/) and in the new 194 Mercer Street Classroom Complex (described above). They can be reserved for regular or occasional class meetings that require in-class computer use by students. Our new web page at http://www.nyu.edu/its/classrooms/ contains an online classroom reservation request form, making it easy to reserve an ITS-managed classroom. This form is only for ITS-operated classrooms, not for general NYU classrooms.

Each classroom has an advanced instructor station that includes an interactive multimedia projection system. ITS will provide faculty and student training in the use of classroom facilities upon request. Classroom software is managed by ITS in a manner consistent with copyright and licensing practices.

If you have questions or comments about the ITS wired classrooms, please send e-mail to: its.classroom.requests@nyu.edu.

Author Biography

John Bako is ITS Computer Facilities Manager for NYU's ITS Academic Computing Services. He can be reached at john.bako@nyu.edu.