User:Mchua

Olpcboxes @ mel laptop.org help@ This user is a Support gang volunteer. Specializes in: documentation, peripherals, new volunteers, grassroots IRC Nick: mchua This user is a spare parts hound. en This user is a native speaker of English. zh-1 这个用户是能够有助于满足于基本 水平的 中国人 。. ja-1 この利用者は少しだけ日本語を話すことができます。 This user's time zone is UTC-6.

Quick reference

You might be looking for...

• /Templates - things I've made that may be useful for wiki-users, including Firefox bookmark shortcuts
• My talk page - for leaving me a message.
• My weekly updates - to see what I've been up to and what I'm planning on doing this week.
• My projects - to see what I'm working on, have worked on, or should/would-like-to work on.
• My braindumps - Thoughts in progress that are not yet fully formed or ready to go to main wiki. Probably inaccurate, half-baked, or some combination of the two. You have been warned.
• /Sandbox - For testing wiki syntax, templates, etc.

Who are you?

First of all, I'm not an OLPC staff member. I'm just an intern and a very enthusiastic volunteer.

My name is Mel Chua, and I am an itinerant hack of all trades and OLPC summer 2007 and spring 2008 intern. I'm active in Support gang, OLPC Chicago, the ILXO grassroots office in Illinois, and an alumni from (and involved in the OLPC groups of) IMSA and Olin as well as University chapters and Grassroots in general. I ran the first Jam in Boston 2007 and continue to assist with coordinating and presenting at Jams and other events. On the technical side, I'm a wiki sysop and create documentation and templates on this wiki on a regular basis, tend to write Developer tutorials when I develop code, and generally like making it easy for new contributors to get started. More info about past, current, and future work is on my /Projects page.

You may also know me from the MIT Media Lab, Design Continuum, or The Open Planning Project. I'm an electrical and computer engineer by training, educator by passion, artist by hobby, journalist by accident, and everything else out of sheer curiosity. Pressed for a short job description, I would say that I engineer educations. More at http://melchua.com.

Contact

To find out where I am, check the Doppler badge on my blog. Leaving a message on my talk page or sending me an email (my first name at laptop dot org) is the best way to reach me 99% of the time. I usually respond within 48 hours. You can also find me on IRC (mchua) and skype (mel_chua). If something's truly urgent, text or call me at 847.970.8484 - please don't leave a voicemail though, as they're extraordinarily difficult for me to understand (I have a hearing loss).

Upcoming events I'll be at

• Grassroots bootcamp in Cambridge, MA from June 9-13, 2008

Let me know if you'd like help at your event; I might be able to pitch in or know someone who can.

About me

What... is your name? Mallory Solomon Lim Chua. Most people call me Mel.

What... is your quest? To make a world where makers make themselves. (I need to come up with a more elegant wording of this.) The job I'd like to retire from is that of an university professor with two PhD's, one in engineering and one in education, teaching and doing research at the (currently shaky and fledgling) union of the two disciplines. My goal is to have as many interesting things happen between now and then as possible. (And, of course, to seek the Holy Grail.)

What... is your favorite color? Yellow.

Random background: I am Chinese and my family is from the Philippines. I was the first person in my extended family to grow up and be schooled outside the developing world, and the first to develop hardware, software, and participate in internet communities. I grew up as a "disabled" kid with a hearing loss severe enough to warrant a host of technological aids, special classes, and a full-time sign language interpreter. I also grew up as a voracious library addict (at a young age, books were easier for me to understand than people talking) and a tomboy who hung out with the guys to talk about math and science (and occasionally play football). This has shaped many of my attitudes towards education, access, technology, globalization, and development. I am a hacker of hardware, software, brains, and the boundaries between them. Please feel free to grab me if you think I'd be useful for a task.

As an electrical and computer engineer, I work with microcontrollers and design simple peripherals and control mechanisms. That sounds a lot fancier than it probably should; basically, I make Things With Electrons Talk To Each Other. I'm still very new to the hardware world, and feel less comfortable in it than any other, but I've "learned enough to teach myself more," as a prof once told me at the end of my undergrad career. (My choice to major in electrical engineering is a canonical masochism story involving a dartboard and the decision to study the field I had the least background in and the most terror of.)

As a coder and Linux user (thanks to some high-school friends and a stack of Debian install floppies) I adore the command line and have picked up programming along the way, primarily in C, C++, and Python. I can usually pick up other languages fast (and forget them even faster) with the exception of assembly, which tends to drive me slowly insane if I work with it for extended periods of time. Open source software has also led me into the related topics of open licenses, open content, and (the young but burgeoning field of) open education.

As a long-time TA (since 2001), I'm fascinated by how people learn and believe in the power of nosce te ipsum. (Personally, I am a highly visual, big-picture person who learns best by teaching and writing documentation, which is usually highly convenient for classmates and fellow hackers with new projects.) I have fairly radical ideas about classroom structure (my preference: none), information distribution (my preference: everyone has read-write access to everything) and student evaluation (my preference: feedback yes, grades no), but these ideas are still quite open and under formation, and I love talking to people about these and related topics. Having completed my undergrad degree in engineering, I'm planning on going to graduate school in education in the near future.

I'm also an enthusiastic (if amateur) wordsmith. I keep a blog of entropic thought at http://blog.melchua.com, on which I occasionally post about OLPC-related things, but no promises are made as to coherency or relevance.