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September |
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.
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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.
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.
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
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.
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July |
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.
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!
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June |
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.
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!
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!
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!
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).
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May |
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.
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!
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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.
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!
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!
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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.
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!
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
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.
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February |
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.
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.
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.
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January |
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!
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 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.
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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