To New Beginnings

It has been a fun time at RIT, but the chapter of my undergraduate career is now being closed. With that in mind, I will have time to focus on my personal projects. For those who have been following me, the intent of this blog was mainly to document projects that I found interesting that are going on in school. Now that I am leaving school, I will be looking to change the direction of my blog or even creating a new one that focuses on more of a broader spectrum of ideas and topics. But, it should be known, that I will not stop blogging. I enjoy documenting my life, and having the ability to share new things that I have learned. With the new skills that I have obtained at RIT, I feel empowered to move forward in life and make something of myself.


This post is to celebrate and share that potential for a new beginning, and to ask you all to please bare with me, as I do some "web" housekeeping.


Till then,
Ihudiya

Creating a Wiki

Today I began working on a new side project. It's a wiki! I am using a template called TikiWiki. I decided to host the wiki myself instead of using a free platform as it would be a great learning experience and I liked the ability to have total control when editing the wiki. My target users are teachers, parents, and students. The purpose of the site will be to post lesson plans or activities students can use when working with a tiny computer called a Pico Cricket. As a Women in Computing Ambassador I was responsible for making mini games with Pico Crickets. Making the games were fun, but I began to realize that there wasn't a specific source that included plenty of options to use the Pico Cricket. So here I am today creating wiki to do just that! Once the wiki is set-up I will be emailing schools and websites that have posted one or two lesson plans and ask if they can post to my site. Collaboration is key, so I am excited to see where this venture will go. I will keep you posted :D

10 Things You Should Know When In an RIT OLPC Course

Here is a list of 10 Tips in order to be successful in OLPC at RIT.

This is in no particular order:

1. Know the basic commands to freenode
2. Know who Richard Stallman is
3. Become familiar with the history OLPC
4. Learn the basic commands to build a wiki page
5. Know how to write an email [that can motivate and is understandable]
6. Become familiar with Python
7. Keep HCI in mind when designing a program
8. Be persistent
9. Be patient
10. Work Hard

10.1 Above all have fun and gain from this experience

Created by the Blocku Team: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Blocku

Blocku

Have you heard of Blocku! My Team in OLPC is currently working on a game called Blocku. Blocku is a puzzle game geared towards 4th grade students around the world. Students have the opportunity to play the game independently, and with friends. Teachers can use it to evaluate learned concepts in their classroom. It is easy to learn, and we have been working hard these past 10 weeks to present our project. From creating the name, creating lesson plans, and coding the material, the Blocku team (Mark, Fran, Ariel, and myself) have been working hard to bring this game to fruition. While we have a long path ahead of us, we have made many achievements this quarter.

Check us out sometime on our wiki: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Blocku

OLPC Course Overview

This Winter Quarter, instead of taking a stereotypical course that provides me the opportunity to focus on my programming skill set, I have decided to take a Special Topics Course concerning One Laptop Per Child.

Originally, I was signed up to take a JavaScript course, but after talking about the Special Topic course to friends and family, I realized that signing up for it would be a good decision. I enjoy helping people, and the OLPC course provided me the opportunity to use my skill set to help students who are learning about computers. Who would think, I would learn so much more.

The first day of the course, I was pleasantly surprised that the 11 week quarter "Craziness" of RIT would not be affecting our work in this course. Our professor stressed on producing quality work that can easily be handed off to the Open Source Community.

Speaking of Open Source Community, that was yet another pleasant surprise. We would be learning about the Open Source Community and be involved with the membership throughout the quarter.

Lastly, I learned we were going to get our hands dirty and learn a new programming language called Python. I am eager to start programming in this language, as it is a HOT language in the market.


-Wish me luck :D

LinkedIn - Is It A Fake Networking Tool?

Have you gotten a job on LinkedIn? Or, has LinkedIn effective marketing campaign persuaded you that having a profile on their website will make you appealing towards employers in your industry.

I would like to think that the latter clearly describes LinkedIn. As a college student I have opened my account and connected with friends that I have on Facebook. This social networking tool is redundant if you contact those same people on facebook.

But, in order to play devils advocate, LinkedIn does give users the feeling of being professional when posting information. It is clearly not a place to post wild drunken night pictures, or to create MySpace status's like @DMALL. But I am not sold on LinkedIn.

I will say it is a place where you can link with old coworkers who you do not want to reveal a lot of your personal life to, but in terms of jobs I have yet to obtain a job through LinkedIn. Additionally, it would be more profitable if I kept in contact with those professional coworkers instead of having them as a LinkedIn friends. In addition, a LinkedIn friend who may obtain updates on my change of profile, but would never hear from me.

In conclusion, I will keep my LinkedIn profile as it is a great way to brand myself as a professional. I will however probably only return to the site to add friends and maybe update my resume. I think employers are using this tool as another way to spy on you.

In the end, I don't expect anything great from this tool, but removed features found in facebook and myspace.

i.e: Another Limited Profile :D

End of Java Tutorial Project

I am sure your curious on how it all came about. Well, don't worry I will have the tutorial posted on my website. I just wanted to take the time to say I really learned a lot. I learned to never allow someone to stop me from speaking my mind. Making sure to have other people double check printed work, and to NEVER leave a printing shop without checking your work. (LONG STORY :D). I appreciated each of my team members, and even though we were not always cohesive, we respected one another and came together as a team.

If we had more time we would implement more features to our project and lessons, but unfortunately because of the time constraint we were not able to do those things. I think it should be stressed that working on a programming assignment it was necessary to set deadlines, and always cross check each other. It was also necessary to document and record all information.

In the end I am very proud and happy of the group that I was in. I wish them all the very best and success in their future endeavors. I have attached an image of our poster presentation of our final design.