When the MHCI program touted the real world experience I would gain in this program, I didn’t realize that they pursued it with such gusto! I’m keeping quite busy this summer, which is why my blog entries have been somewhat lacking. I promise they’ll pick up come August, and I’ll try to keep the entries steady in the meantime.

Till the next one, I thought I’d give you an update of the projects that I’m working on. As they wrap up, I’ll be posting them (or demos, or websites, or something relevant) for you to look at. I promise I’m not slacking. =D

• My Portfolio Site: Look for this in the coming week. I’ve had a domain name for over a year now, and still no website to show for it? Except this one, of course, but that’s beside the point — I’ve been doing lots of work and I’m not showing it off! Hopefully that will change very soon.
• PSLC Data Shop: The Pittsburgh Science of Learning Center commissioned a Project group to aid in the development of their Data Shop. They need their data organized, and more importantly, visualized! We’ve started designing some of the reports, and it’s going well so far. We should have a cool product come August!
• PICOLA: This is the project that sponsored me to give a talk at Stanford last month. I’m doing some of the Flash development for the computer interface. We also just got our mobile devices in! Yes, my sponsor here is dreaming big, and we’re already building a mobile interface. The perk — the mobile device that I’m testing on is mine to keep! I’m now the proud owner of a Dell Axim Pocket PC. Hmm… I wonder if it will network with my Mac…
• Calc Study: My research sponsor’s philosophy for research questions is like her philosophy for applying for grants: the more the merrier. Aside from trying to answer a slieu of questions about how people learn Calculus (and exactly what the mechanism is for learning), the Calc Study is serving to gather dialogues between participants and tutors / peer learners to provide a basis for a natural language tutor in Calculus. That’s a great lead-in to…
• TuTalk: The idea behind TuTalk is to make it easy for a layperson to build a conversation-based tutor without a whole lot of technological know-how. I’m slowly ramping up on this project, but it will likely be my life come August. That’s OK, at least Project will be over.

As these projects wrap up, I’ll post more and show you the work we’re doing. Till then, I hope you enjoy the interim posts!