STA Blog

STA Work Blog

STAs: Student Technology Assistants

Who We Are
LAITS: IT and Facilities Director, Joe TenBarge initiated the Student Technology Assistant program in 2004. STAs are UT students who work on a variety of projects in collaboration with UT faculty and LAITS staff members. STAs assist College of Liberal Arts faculty members and administrative staff with print and web design. From building presentations, to creating audio/visual works, and producing online classes in the LAITS film studios, STAs are instrumental in helping COLA faculty realize their vision for multimedia projects that enhance their teaching and the students learning experience. By the end of their student careers, STAs have portfolios which demonstrate their accrued technical and design skills.

Prospective STAs:

Creative and technically inclined students are appointed as STAs for one year, with the possibility of being rehired as long as they study at the university. Applicants for the program are hired before both long semesters. Interested students may look for postings on Hire-A-Longhorn when positions are available. Positions will have Student Technology Assistant (illustrator or web designer) in the title of the job post.

Faculty and Staff:

Faculty & Staff with questions about services, please contact us.

https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/laits/contacts.php

  • Audio Services: Michael C Heidenreich, Director of Studio Operations & STA Program Coordinator
  • Video Services: Kelly Webster, Video Production Supervisor, Video STA Supervisor
  • Graphic Design & Web Design Services: Suloni Robertson, Art Director / Design & Coding STA Supervisor

Week of 9/24

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Week of 9/24

This past week I’ve worked on two animations for Russian.

The first one, featuring the Adventurer climbing a hill, had more work involved than the other animation. For the climbing animation, I had to create a “climb cycle” of sorts for the character. I wanted to make him look like he was absolutely dying, and then the camera zooms out and it turns out he’s on this tiny hill that’s not even that high. I also had to animate the cute rabbits (drawn by Duo) hopping around, silently judging this fellow.

Next, I did this edit of a baby crawling on the floor. All I did was add a drop shadow to the baby and animate the Glasses Boy sleeping. (Also Tate told me the Glasses Boy and Awake Girl had a baby???)

project: Updating Anthropology Virtual Labs
completion status: Started September 2018
staff guidance: Estella Sun
STA team members: Bridget, Valerie, Emily, Chloe, Duo
description/plans: Transfer all the text and images from the old Flash website to a new site that can be accessed by future students.
To be completed: ASAP

I also started updating the Anthro V Labs. The lab I was assigned is super long and has a ton of videos that I can’t embed, so it’s a bit frustrating.

Here’s an example of what the new site looks like compared to the old site:

 

 

 

And here’s what it looks like behind the scenes:

Finally I worked on some PSAs for video title cards telling everyone to vote!

project: Voting PSA cards
completion status: Started Sept. 19
staff guidance: Tate Gibson, Suloni Robertson, Mike Heidenreich
STA team members:
description/plans: Design video cards to tell online students to vote!
To be completed: Sept. 24ish

Vote y’all!!!!!

9-27-18

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project: eAnthro Virtual Labs
completion status: Started Sep. 20 2018
staff guidance: Ruben, Suloni
STA team members: Chloe, Melissa, Duo, Estella, Emily, Valerie
description/plans: find, copy and paste content (text, pictures) to the new WP site for each assigned lab, make notes on excel spreadsheet when there are interactives/other elements that can’t be pasted in.
To be completed: n/a

Continuing with the above project which has been my priority for the past week–I’ve been assigned 2 labs and I’m almost done with the first. I’ve also been working on IDs and fixing a banner for the Turkish studies page.

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This past week, I helped Tate with a quick watercolor bg. This time, it was a hill that one of the characters and the bunnies will be climbing.

For the rest of the week, I mainly focused on eanthro labs and updated a website banner here and there. It’s been a good experience to manage the eanthro project. It seems like everyone is doing well. I tried to give everyone a roughly equal amount of pages to complete, but some are just way longer than others.

I also got assigned to manage the Cascade updating project, so I’m currently in the process to organizing.

Stacy also mentioned I would have a project involving WordPress for him, so that’s pretty exciting as well.

https://sta.laits.utexas.edu/blog/2018/09/26/24831-2/

Vlabs!

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I worked a lot on the vlabs today! It’s very strange navigating Grav (the site that will house the anthropology materials), but I think I’m getting the hang of it!