Virtual Sticky Board and ImagineRIT, Innovation Festival

By Erika  |  April 10, 2010 Posted in Projects, RIT  |  Comments (0)

Last quarter I was on a team that designed and prototyped a touch screen application that virtualizes the agile development project management methodology. The traditional, non-computer process involves moving sticky notes around a whiteboard tracking not started, in progress, and completed project tasks. We entered our project, which we’ve named the “Virtual Sticky Board” (VSB)  into RIT’s ImagineRIT Innovation Festival.

ImagineRIT logoImagine RIT: Innovation and Creativity Festival is a campus-wide event that showcases the innovative and creative spirit of RIT students, faculty and staff. Visitors experience the breadth and depth of RIT through interactive presentations, hands-on demonstrations, exhibitions, and research projects set up throughout campus. Food, kids’ activities and multiple performance stages with live music and entertainment are also a hit with visitors of all ages. Over 25,000 visitors walked our campus at last year’s event and we expect even more this year on Saturday May 1, 2010. The event will take place from 10am to 5pm, rain or shine and is FREE and open to the public.

You can find our exhibitor information here. We will be presenting the VSB at booth #179 in the Gordon Field House. Stop by and check us out!

Portfolio updates and resource management

By Erika  |  March 1, 2010 Posted in Resource management  |  Comments (1)

I’m doing a major clean up of my course files (notes, PowerPoint presentations, assignments, articles, images, etc.) and am simultaneously updating my portfolio here on the site. I’ve added several projects that I am currently working on. Some of these projects are in work and therefore I’ll add them at a later date.

Together Screenshot

"Together" resource manager

In my quest to find a decent program that helps me organize my course resources, I stumbled upon “Together.” It’s a resource manager application for Mac OS X and comes with some nifty features. There is an option to import the content from a URL and save it directly to a PDF file format. The PDF is then placed in your resource library. Another nice feature is the extra tab slider that attaches to the edge of your screen and slides out letting you instantly search your library and make quick notes.

Together seems great for my needs. I can sort all my course resources by “course” whereby I divvy up the files in folders according to quarter and course name. I add all relevant files in each course folder and tag resources (PDF articles) with a tag labeled “resource.” I then created a “Smart” folder (similar to iTunes Smart folders) that aggregates all files tagged as “resource.”

These two ways of organizing my course resources allows me to search for files contextually by quarter and course name, as well as non-contextually using the Smart folder for my resources that span across all courses.

Rochester, NY

By Erika  |  September 1, 2009 Posted in RIT  |  Comments (0)

I’ve officially moved into my new apartment in Rochester, NY. I made the 10-hour trip from central Virginia with my family. I’ve been here for five full days and am getting used to my new location–I drove around town a few times and today I rode my bike a few miles on the Lehigh Valley Trail. The trail runs along the Genesee River which intersects the Erie Canal a few miles from my apartment. The trail is great because it takes me about 4/5 of the way to RIT so I won’t have to ride my bike on busy roads.

I start classes at RIT next week on the 7th. Two of my three classes start at noon and the third is on Thursday nights at 6pm. I’ll be taking 12 credits (4 credits each) each “quarter.” They call the sessions “quarters” instead of semesters since there are four sessions: fall, winter, spring, and summer, although I’m not required to take courses during the summer quarter. My courses this semester for my degree in HCI are:

  • Foundations in Human-Computer Interaction
  • Research Methods
  • Programming for the WWW (using PHP)

Even though I don’t have classes this week I have two orientation sessions, one on Wednesday and the one on Thursday. I’m really looking forward to the orientation meetings because I’ll get to meet other graduate students, especially IT graduate students.