Academic and Volunteer Work
Below are descriptions of projects I've worked on.
This is the liveUgli project, an attempt to build a location-aware social network within the main study areas of the University of Michigan campus. I supervised a team of undergraduate students, that drafted the maps and provided feedback on the development of interfaces to these maps and their social network concept. The project never took off, but I still love the idea.
Academic Projects
TxtBusA2 -
The TxtBusA2 project, developed for the ACM SIG CHI 2007 student design competition, explored the potential of an SMS delivery service to encourage the use of public busses in Ann Arbor. Though the technology was never deployed, we focused on the design of signs that would show the use of the service and the formatting of the messages sent by the service. Since this project I've been looking forward to more opportunities to work with mobile devices and their potential applications.
Open CourseWare (OCW) - University of Michigan -
As a result of my work with the Sakai project I became involved with a grass-roots effort to involve the University of Michigan in the larger Open CourseWare Consortium. After my graduation I supervised a group of masters students as they determined methods for lowering the cost of OCW. One of our proposed solutions is currently being piloted. The dScribe program, aims to assist in the digitization and copyright checking of a course through the use of student volunteers.
Volunteer Work
Newcomb Center for Research on Women - New Orleans -
During the winter break of 2005, I participated in archival relief efforts in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Working with the librarians and archivists of the Newcomb Center my team helped to evaluate damage to archival materials and began the work of putting their library back in order. You can read more about the project here
Humanities Out There Program - University of California Irvine -
During the 2000-2002 school years I mentored fourth grade English students in the Santa Ana Unified School district. The goal of the project was curricular enrichment in poetry and short fiction. My favorite part of HOT was the end of each workshop when the entire group of students would gather in their school's computer lab and publish their best project on the Internet, and get live feedback from reviewers back at UCI. The kids' responses to receiving praise over the Internet was telling about the power of the medium.