iSTEP Tanzania

Today is the official last day of the iSTEP internship. While the team in Tanzania won’t be hitting home soil until Tuesday, our formal involvement in the projects ends when we pack it up today.
It’s been a fun 10 weeks, a hard 10 weeks, an exhausting 10 weeks, but it certainly hasn’t felt like 10 [...]

Everybody on the team is quickly getting short on sleep. I have found myself working in the AM on more than one occasion and I have caught a couple of the team in Tanzania in what should be early morning time as well. There’s only one week left and everyone is clearly feeling it.
So [...]

Almost everybody has gotten to the point where their projects are demo-ready. Hatem performed the literacy tools demo today showing off the basic soccer game, Dan did a demo for the social worker application a couple days ago and Brad will be testing our new method of mode-switching on the Braille Tutor in the coming [...]

There’s only three weeks left in our internship program and I think everybody is feeling it. We’re heavily into the development stage right now and we’re working hard to get the projects up and running, as well as beginning the thought process of how we’re going to leave Tanzania at the end of the month.
The [...]

This week seems to have gone by awfully quickly. That hasn’t stopped it from including a lot of work, but at least it’s Friday and the 4th of July is tomorrow. A celebratory weekend is something I could really use right now.
The bulk of my work this week has been trying to figure out the [...]

First of all, congratulations to Hasheem Thabeet who last night became the first Tanzanian player to be drafted into the NBA. After being born and raised in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, the same city that our team is currently stationed, Thabeet attended the University of Connecticut before being selected with the second pick of the [...]

So as Emily mentioned, Pittsburgh got hit with a bit of a storm Wednesday night. I received the pleasure of finding a tree torn down and laying in the road on my way home from dinner and Thursday morning learning that the key fob for my building was malfunctioning so I had no means of [...]

One pretty significant part of doing research is presenting research in the hopes that some people will give you money in order to allow you to do more research. Presentation skills tend to be oft. ignored but incredibly essential part of any research project. For the most part the team on the ground has been [...]

CMU during the summer is a completely different environment from CMU during the school year. The cut normally plastered with students is often vacant. The dining areas, normally at peak capacity during lunch hours are littered with only professors having lunch. I even passed through the game room and for the first time I can [...]

Welcome to the blog for iSTEP 2009 in Tanzania. Bookmark this space as the team will keep this space updated frequently with stories about their experiences. The team will formally depart for Tanzania on May 22nd so be sure to check back soon for updates from the iSTEP members!