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News Archive 2010

Carnegie Mellon

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September

YPSA Logo We are happy to share that our iSTEP 2010 partner Young Power in Social Action (YPSA) received awards at the 2010 National e-Content and ICT for Development competition, organized by the Bangladesh Ministry of Science and ICT and D.Net (Development Research Network). YPSA received an award for their DAISY (Digital Accessible Information System) For All project and a Special Mention award for their online advocacy platform for workers involved in the ship-breaking industry. Read the local newspaper article.

August

Welcome to all returning and new students!

Save the date for TechBridgeWorld's 4th annual Interactive event!
Thursday, November 11, 2010 | 5:00 - 7:00PM
Newell-Simon Hall Atrium | Carnegie Mellon University

For more information, please click here.

TechBridgeWorld will be expanding its bridges to the Philippines to explore technology solutions for assisting people affected by annual floods. A Robotics Institute (RI) faculty team lead by Paul Scerri, and including TechBridgeWorld's Founder and Director M. Bernardine Dias, as well as John Dolan, George Kantor, and David Wettergreen won the RI Faculty Retreat Collaborative Challenge in May and were awarded start-up funding for this project. This team will work with several partners to create a fleet of small, semi-autonomous boats to gather information and deliver emergency supplies to the many who are annually affected by floods in the Philippines.
iSTEP 2010 Team and advisors in Chittagong, Bangladesh TechBridgeWorld Project Manager Sarah Belousov, Graduate Student Representative M. Beatrice Dias and Videographer Matt Richards went to Chittagong, Bangladesh in July during the iSTEP 2010 internship. Sarah and Beatrice met with partners Asian University for Women and Young Power in Social Action to discuss sustainability for both projects and Matt collected footage for a promotional video on the iSTEP internship program. Sarah, Beatrice and Matt enjoyed their trip and spent their free time with the interns and visiting some places near Chittagong.
iSTEP 2010 Team in Bangladesh The iSTEP 2010 internship is now complete! Congratulations to the following Carnegie Mellon students and recent graduates who completed the second year of our iSTEP program: Jen Horwitz, Brian Manalastas, Jon Muller, Aysha Siddique and Anthony Velázquez. Their hard work and dedication resulted in two technology solutions designed to meet the needs of two communities in Chittagong, Bangladesh. The team developed an educational technology tool to enhance English literacy skills for pre-collegiate students at the iSTEP 2010 Tech Floater in Pittsburgh Asian University for Women, and worked with Young Power in Social Action to determine features of our next version of the Braille Writing Tutor that would be useful for visually impaired students in Chittagong. For more information on this summer's internship and to learn about the team's experiences, visit the iSTEP 2010 website.

July

ICTD 2010 Logo TechBridgeWorld is happy to announce that our paper submission of the iSTEP 2009 Social Worker project was accepted for publication and poster presentation at the ICTD2010 conference. Our Braille Writing Tutor project was also accepted as a demonstration at the conference. Registration is now open for the conference, which will be held December 13 - 16, 2010 in Royal Holloway, University of London. Scholarships are available for individuals requesting financial support to attend the conference and the deadline for applications is August 15, 2010. Details on the scholarship application process is posted on the conference website. Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar is a platinum sponsor of this year's conference.
We are delighted to announce that our proposal to present Education e-Village was accepted at the 2010 Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing conference. The presentation will familiarize participants with the challenges faced by technology educators in underserved communities and provide them with academic and industry perspectives on the importance of addressing these challenges and ideas for solutions. This will be an opportunity to discuss current ideas for E-Village and solicit audience feedback on how it might be further enhanced. We will also invite participants to collaborate across national and professional boundaries to join the effort to enhance technology education in underserved communities.
LT Phone game being tested at WPSD TechBridgeWorld recently wrapped up field testing of the English Literacy Tools project at the Western Pennsylvania School for the Deaf (WPSD). We appreciate the WPSD administrators' support for our collaboration, and thank the participating 7th and 8th grade WPSD students for their involvement in our study. TechBridgeWorld is especially grateful to WPSD teacher Joyce Maravich for facilitating needs assessment and testing with her students. In general, the students enjoyed the game and thought it was an interesting and fun way to practice English grammar. We will be incorporating their recommendations in future work.
TechBridgeWorld director M. Bernardine Dias recently received a Faculty Research Award from Google to support research on a navigation aid for the visually impaired. This project, a collaborative effort between TechBridgeWorld and the rCommerce lab, aims to design, implement, test and deploy a smart mobile phone-based personalized aid to enhance the navigation capability, independence, and safety of visually impaired and deafblind people. The Western Pennsylvania School for Blind Children and Blind & Vision Rehabilitation Services of Pittsburgh will be our community partners on this project. We are grateful to Google and our partners for their support!

June

TBW ICTD Game Tanzania During the Spring 2010 semester, a team of Carnegie Mellon students collaborated with TechBridgeWorld to build an interactive educational game on ICTD field research. The game was part of a human-computer interaction (HCI) senior course project and was based on the iSTEP 2009 team’s experiences in Tanzania. We thank professor Robert Kraut and students Jerry Feng, Jennifer Olsen, Sung Whoo Rhim, Aesha Shah and Teresa Tan for their creativity and hard work. Try the game online.
TBW Spring 2010 Newsletter We welcome Tejasvi Ashok to the TechBridgeWorld team! Tejasvi, a Carnegie Mellon graduate student in Chemical Engineering, is our new Administrative Intern. She will be working closely with us this summer on event planning for this year's TechBridgeWorld Interactive, improving our media materials, and promoting our research group to the Carnegie Mellon and Pittsburgh community. Welcome, Tejasvi!
TBW Spring 2010 Newsletter Our Spring 2010 newsletter is now available! Read this issue to learn more about the accomplishments of our iSTEP 2010 team in Bangladesh, our new online ICTD field research game, student research updates, an addition to the TechBridgeWorld team, featured TechBridgeWorld alum, and more!

Jessica Thurston TechBridgeWorld would like to express our sincere appreciation to Jessica Thurston who has worked as our Administrative and Design Intern from Summer 2008 to Spring 2010. Jessica completed her B.H.A. in 2009 in Urban Design and Professional Writing and completed one year at Heinz College towards a Master's degree in Public Policy and Management at Carnegie Mellon University. She is moving to Washington, DC to start work with the U.S. General Services Administration. While an intern for TechBridgeWorld, Jessica assisted us with many programs and events, improved the design and content of several TechBridgeWorld media materials, and expanded awareness of our research group to the campus community. This summer, Jessica is volunteering her time as a design consultant for TechBridgeWorld. Thank you Jessica for all of your hard work and we wish you the best in your future endeavors!
Left to right: Yonina Cooper, Aysha Siddique, M. Bernardine Dias, Ermine Teves TechBridgeWorld Founder and Executive Director M. Bernardine Dias and Associate Director Yonina Cooper have completed 5 years of dedicated teaching, advising and researching at Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar. Bernardine and Nina were acknowledged at the Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar End of Semester Party last month. Congratulations Bernardine and Nina! Pictured from left to right are Nina, Aysha Siddique (TechBridgeWorld recent graduate), Bernardine, and Ermine Teves (TechBridgeWorld Project Assistant).

May

iSTEP 2010 Bangladesh The iSTEP 2010 team is off to a great start! The internship commenced on the 23rd and interns Jennifer Horwitz, Brian Manalastas, Aysha Siddique, and Anthony Velazquez are stationed in Chittagong, Bangladesh while Jonathan Muller is stationed in Pittsburgh, US. You can follow the team's progress on their website and Facebook and Twitter sites. We are also delighted to announce that Jennifer Horwitz was elected by the team as the iSTEP 2010 leader. Congratulations Jennifer!
Congratulations to all graduated seniors in Carnegie Mellon's Pittsburgh and Doha campuses! A special congratulations to our graduated TechBridgeWorld students: Kaleem Rahman, Saurabh Sanghvi, Aysha Siddique, and Anthony Velazquez. Thank you for your dedication and hard work and we wish you the best in your future endeavors! Congratulations to Kaleem, Aysha and Anthony for winning Senior Leadership Awards. Recipients of these awards have made a substantial and unique impact on the Carnegie Mellon campus community, with significant contributions in academics and research. Congratulations to Saurabh for winning 2nd place for Education e-Village in the Yahoo! Competition at the 2010 Meeting of the Minds.
AUW Logo TechBridgeWorld Associate Director Yonina Cooper is in Bangladesh teaching a week-long workshop on ICTD at the Asian University for Women (AUW). This workshop will prepare participating AUW first-year undergraduate interns for their role in the iSTEP internship this summer. The workshop has been going well and the students are excited to collaborate on the internship projects.
TechBridgeWorld students Kaleem Rahman and Aysha Siddique recently completed their senior theses on TechBridgeWorld related projects. Kaleem's thesis was titled "Education e-Village: Empowering Technology Educators in Developing Regions" and Aysha's was "Designing Mobile Phone Based Games to Improve English Literacy Skills of Limited English Proficient Adults." Their research contributes to current TechBridgeWorld projects: Education e-Village, Project Kane, iSTEP, and Assistive Educational Technology. Congratulations Kaleem and Aysha!

April

TechBridgeWorld staff members Hend Gedawy and Ermine Teves presented the Assistive Educational Technology project at Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar's annual Meeting of the Minds event on April 27, 2010. Interns Jennifer Horwitz, Jonathan Muller and Anthony Velazquez will present the iSTEP 2010 internship in Pittsburgh's Meeting of the Minds event on May 5, 2010.
TechBridgeWorld students Kaleem Rahman and Saurabh Sanghvi have successfully completed the pre-pilot study of Education e-Village! We would like to thank our participants from Ashesi University College, Asian University for Women, Assumption University of Thailand, Boston University, Carnegie Mellon University, Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar, Howard University, and King's College London, University of London. The participants provided valuable feedback on useful features and interface design for E-Village. If you would like to participate in the E-Village project or would like to recommend someone to participate in this project, please e-mail info@techbridgeworld.org.
AUW Logo The Asian University for Women (AUW) has selected 10 first year undergraduate students to participate in TechBridgeWorld's iSTEP internship this summer. The AUW students will work closely with the iSTEP interns on the two projects and educate the interns on the community partners (AUW and Young Power in Social Action). We look forward to working with the AUW students!
Wael Ghazzawi We express our sincere appreciation to Wael Ghazzawi who worked as a research programmer on TechBridgeWorld's Assistive Educational Technology project since 2008. Among other tasks, Wael's main research focus with the Assistive Education Technology project was developing a low cost, standalone version of our Braille Writing Tutor. We wish Wael the best in his future endeavors!

March

The website for the Assistive Educational Technology project is now available! The project explores the role that computing technology can play in developing educational tools for visually-impaired and deaf communities in Qatar and around the world. TechBridgeWorld faculty, research staff, and students are currently developing and field testing automated tutors and educational games to enhance the lives of these populations. Visit the Assistive Educational Technology website for more information.
TBW Winter 2010 Newsletter
Our Winter 2010 newsletter is now available! Read this issue to learn more about the iSTEP 2010 internship, Yahoo! sponsorship, E-Village updates, new addition to the TechBridgeWorld team, V-Unit updates, featured TechBridgeWorld alum, and more!

Yahoo! logo Yahoo! iSTEP 2010 Fellow, Jonathan Muller TechBridgeWorld is excited to announce Yahoo! as a corporate sponsor for the iSTEP 2010 internship. Their sponsorship this year includes a fellowship opportunity, which funds the full program costs associated with one iSTEP 2010 participant. Yahoo! colleagues have selected Jonathan Muller, who is the team's Technical Floater based in Pittsburgh, as the Yahoo! iSTEP 2010 Fellow. The fellowship seeks to motivate students to think creatively about how they can use their technical skills, business knowledge and global awareness to solve social issues around the world. Jonathan was selected for his excellent and broad range of technology and business experience and education.
TechBridgeWorld students Kaleem Rahman and Saurabh Sanghvi have made considerable progress on Education e-Village as part of their senior projects. They are currently conducting a pre-pilot study which involves obtaining feedback from university-level instructors around the world on potential features for the final E-Village website. If you would like to participate in E-Village studies or would like to recommend someone, please e-mail info@techbridgeworld.org
DSO logo Development Solutions Organization (DSO) expanded to the Carnegie Mellon Doha campus in Fall 2009. DSO-Qatar started off the Spring 2010 semester by organizing an extensive fundraising initiative for victims of the Haiti earthquakes. The fundraising initiative spanned one week and included the help of other student organizations and student volunteers. During the fundraising week, students held events and manned donation booths across Education City. The students raised QAR 20,556, which was given to the Qatar Red Crescent campaign to support 5,000 families in Haiti for over 12 months.

February

iSTEP logo TechBridgeWorld's iSTEP mini course is wrapping up this week. The iSTEP 2010 interns along with Carnegie Mellon students from the Pittsburgh and Doha campuses learned about Bangladesh, Chittagong, iSTEP 2010 projects and partners (Asian University for Women and Young Power in Social Action), and ICTD field research. The outcomes of the mini course will be deployed in Bangladesh this summer through the iSTEP internship.

ICTD 2009 Logo The ICTD2009 website has been updated with conference proceedings, videos to the keynote speeches, and pictures from the conference. Royal Holloway, University of London will be hosting the next conference, ICTD2010, from December 13 - 16 in London. The calls for Papers and Workshop Sessions are now open and the deadline for submission is April 2, 2010. Please see the ICTD2010 website for more details.
Ashesi University Logo Patrick G. Awuah Jr., Founder and President of Ashesi University in Ghana will be visiting Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar as a 2010 Distinguished Lecturer. His lecture will be on Tuesday, February 16th at 6:00PM in the Four Seasons Hotel in Doha, Qatar. For more information on Awuah's lecture please visit the Distinguished Lecture Series event page.
We welcome Hend Gedawy to the TechBridgeWorld team! Hend just joined our Assistive Technology project team where she will be working on the Braille Writing Tutor, DeSIGN, and more. She graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar's Computer Science program in 2009 and will be pursuing her Masters degree in Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh starting summer 2010.

January

Daniel Freeman We express our sincere appreciation to Daniel Freeman who worked as TechBridgeWorld's Web Intern since his freshman year in 2007. Daniel was primarily involved with maintaining and updating the TechBridgeWorld website, the ICTD 2009 conference website, and the iSTEP program website. We wish Daniel the best of luck in his future endeavors!

V-Unit logo Please join us for our Spring 2010 V-Unit Presentation to be held Thursday, January 28th from 10:00 - 11:00a.m. in Newell-Simon Hall 1507. Ph.D. student W. Ben Towne will present his work on "The Open Source Policy Project," which has been advised by MIT faculty member Mark Klein. The V-Unit program is open to proposals for new graduate student projects - we encourage you to attend this presentation to learn more about how to get involved.
iSTEP logo
iSTEP 2009 participant Hatem Alismail is featured in the January issue of Carnegie Mellon Today magazine. The story, titled "Winning Phone Call" features Hatem's experience field testing the Literacy Tools project with the Mlimani Primary School students and teachers in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

Carnegie Mellon Human-Computer Interaction faculty Matthew Kam will be teaching a new course in the Spring 2010 semester: The Role of Technology in Learning in the 21st Century (05-438/05-838). The class will be held on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 12:00 - 1:20pm in the Gates-Hillman Center Room 4301. The 12-unit course, open to undergraduate and graduate students with technical or non-technical backgrounds, will discuss how learning theories can be drawn on to impact global poverty.
DSO logo TechBridgeWorld student and DSO Co-President Saurabh Sanghvi will be co-teaching a StuCo in the Spring 2010 semester: Introduction to International Development (98-141). The class, which will be held on Mondays from 6:30 - 7:50pm, will introduce students to different global development areas and allow students to debate and formulate their ideas on what should be done to alleviate these issues.

 

 
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