jimRowan

I am an assistant professor in the School of Science and Technology at the Georgia Gwinnett College in Lawrenceville, Georgia.

My work here centers around teaching. To make this interesting and challenging I tend to push students out of their comfort zones by incorporating more unconventional input devices like touch-sensitive screens and by having them design applications for unfamiliar user populations like pre-literate children or for the Elder population.

The choice of unfamiliar user populations also leads to interesting collaborative projects between IT and Early Childhood Education and Psychology.

Senior Capstone 2006

As an illustration of this approach my Senior Capstone class created SteppedAway, a system intended to reduce the frustration experienced by both professors and students in their attempts to meet face to face during posted office hours. For more details, visit the SteppedAway hyperlink in the sidebar

The Digital Family Portrait, my Ph.D. research at Georgia Tech, is a dignity-sensitive, home-appropriate display of a distant elder's daily activity. For more details, visit the Digital Family Portrait hyperlink or for the complete story, click the dissertation hyperlink

Digital Family Portrait

The Digital Family Portrait, written in Squeak! Squeak!, when deployed in the home of the adult child, provides sufficient peace of mind for the adult child to feel comfortable about leaving their aging parent in the family home rather than moving them to some form of institutional living.

Dude's Magic Box

Dude's Magic Box is work begun at Georgia Tech. It provides a means of communication between a pre-literate child and either their non-custodial divorced parent or their distant grandparent. For more details, visit the Dude's Magic Box hyperlink in the sidebar

Squeak

My "hammer" of choice is Squeak! Squeak!, a version of SmallTalk80 imagined by former XEROX PARC luminary Alan Kay.

I am also a member of Squeakers Squeakers!, a community of Squeak fanatics here at Georgia Tech.

Finally, this website is an AniAniWeb, a new slant on the Swiki built by Je77 of Mark Guzdial's Collaborative Software Laboratory at Georgia Tech. AKA CoWeb or collaborative website, this AniAniWeb not only supports website construction for the HTML-uninitiated, but it allows the inclusion of content on the fly, by anyone, from any computer with web access. It is a powerful tool for introduction to web-content building as well as collaboration.

Making contact:

jrowan @ ggc.usg.edu
Office: Faculty Bunker, C232A ;-)
Phone: 678.524.6403

Mailing Address
Jim Rowan
School of Science and Technology
Georgia Gwinnett College
Lawrenceville, Georgia 30043

At ECL

Georgia Tech

In the Outback

Trek sponsored by Photoshop

Scaling K2

Another Photoshop adventure...