Heidy Maldonado's Personal Page: Who am I?
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Heidy Maldonado |
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I am an idealist, a perennial student with many interests, some of which find their way through my research projects, while others remain sources of intellectual curiosity, prompting me to have taken classes in almost every department at Stanford University and to collect books (and therefore, bookcases) assiduously.
Generally however, there are many other topics I am interested in, have read some about, have taken classes on, and still enjoy debating for hours about. Please note that each of those classifiers is an additional filter: there are certainly many classes I've taken and topics I feel unqualified to debate; many topics out there that, while I may have read about, prefer not to discuss; and of course, there are many more topics than I know of and have yet to discover. Here is an unsorted stream of consciousness on just what these topics are --
[big breath] Given the wide range of quality of life in this world, I feel truly fortunate for the opportunity to pursue a doctoral degree, engaging in intellectual discourse and exchanges on topics of our choosing, and am thankful for the health, support, encouragement, advice and good wishes of everyone who has made this possible: my parents, grandparents, professors, friends, mentors, uncles and cousins, colleagues, sponsors, doctors, teachers, administrators.
I have been a Teaching Assistant at Stanford for twelve quarters, and enjoy getting to know the students, and their interests, as they further refine their career goals through their interaction with novel concepts and materials. Receiving the Centennial Teaching Assistant Award is one of my proudest achievements.
I often take photos and notes as memory aids, and can often remember verbatim lectures I wrote down. Yet as any of my friends can attest, because of RSI, I often call or send a handwritten letter in response to emails.
If I could not do design and research educational technologies, studying new forms of emotional engagement between kids and machines, I could be an architecture student (as my Mom and career counseling tests predicted), a journalist or novelist, a student at a Culinary Academy, a book editor or distributor, and could perhaps be found sketching sculptures at museums and temples worldwide.
Some fun facts: My favorite color is purple, although close seconds include fuscia (deep pink/red) and turquoise. I adore pets, dark chocolate, traveling, and can read, understand and speak four languages, but only after morning coffee! Comes from growing up in Caracas, Venezuela, where even my dog liked his morning "cafecito con leche."
Interests:
Professionally, I design and conduct research in these four areas:
Human-computer interaction, educational technologies, emotional engagement with technological creations, cross-cultural exchanges, synthetic computer characters, wireless handheld devices for learning and activism, robot-human interaction, cross-national teaching practices, interface design, international educational comparisons, digital divide issues within classrooms and across nations, design for learning, effects of the internet in developing nations, constructionist toys, videogame design, online communities, national technology policy debates, computer science and programming education, visualizations for learning, rise of entrepreneurship in adverse environments, higher educational analysis, animation principles and practices (both traditional, computer generated, and puppetry), neurological and psychological research in emotion, product design, archaeology, sociobiology, creativity, ancient sculptural art, comic strip design.
[phew! that's a lot!]
Fun facts and quirks