Drexel uses Twitter to notify accepted students, build commuity

If you went to college, it is likely you know what it’s like to anxiously check the mailbox everyday, waiting for your college acceptance letter.

However the rite of passage is about to be added to the list of things Twitter could change forever.

At Drexel, the school has begun using the microblogging tool to not only follow up on students who have shown interest in the university, but @DrexelAdmission will even notify them of their acceptance (Disclaimer: as you can see in the tweet, my brother was the inspiration for this post.)

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Science Leadership Academy: A new model for schools

Students walk down the hallway in between classes at the Science Leadership Academy.

In partnership with Temple University’s Multimedia Urban Reporting Lab, the university’s capstone journalism class, students Chelsea Leposa and Jared Pass will cover neighborhood technology issues for Technically Philly and Philadelphia Neighborhoods through May.

At the Science Leadership Academy the students are treated like adults, says junior Cody Nichols.

Built in partnership with the School District of Philadelphia and the Franklin Institute, the Science Leadership Academy (SLA) is a new student-oriented, project-based program. Put away your No. 2 pencil—at SLA, there are no standardized tests aside from the state required PSSAs.

Students work closely together and with teachers to create a variety of projects. Student projects even contribute to the school’s daily activities. SLA’s help desk, for instance, is one of the largest student projects, says Chris Alfano, tehe school’s system administrator and computer support specialist.

“We have about 12 students who are assigned to come here, and they pretty much take care of all the school’s repair needs,” Alfano says. All 10th and 11th graders at SLA are required to have an internship that meets once a week.

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Drexel’s Jaemi HUBO robotics program helps introduce science to children

Humanoids like Drexel's Jaemi HUBO could make robotics relatable by giving the science a human face | Photos by Neal Santos (nealsantos.com)

This article originally appeared in Philadelphia City Paper’s annual Science Issue, published today. Read the special section, available on newsstands this week or online here.

Inside the sun-filled atrium of Drexel’s Bassone Research building, a blue, star-shaped balloon floats in the architectural web of gray steel that criss-crosses geometrically before six stories of glass paneling.

It’s just one of those metallic-looking, helium-filled tchotchkes you buy in a gift shop. But its mid-air rest speaks to Earth’s gravitational pull doing battle with the lightness of the gas inside, and its deflating mylar material brings to mind Kennedy-era NASA research.

It is widely recognized that the United States has let its once invigorated focus in science and technology slip from its fingers like that errant balloon.

Right now, American children score low in science literacy. A 2006 study ranked the U.S. 21st of 30 developed nations, President Obama pointed out last November when the White House launched its Educate to Innovate campaign, a $260 million private sector push to inspire the next generation of lab geeks.

Worse yet are statistics about women and minorities entering science fields. Only 18 percent of engineering bachelor’s degrees are awarded to women, and 11.1 percent to African-American and Hispanic students combined, according to a recent study by the American Society of Engineering Education [PDF].

So you could say there’s a bit of pressure on the shoulders of Drexel’s Jaemi HUBO, an adorable, anthropomorphic robot runt that acts like it just rolled out of bed.

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Shop Talk: Bradley Ericson and 3SecondReceipts

Bradley Ericson

Like a lot of Drexel undergrads, Bradley Ericson likes to take trips for the South Street Special.

“You wrap a piece of Lorenzo’s pizza around a Jim’s steak and see which one of your friends can finish first,” the Drexel sophomore says. “It’s the simple things that keep you young.”

Of course, what has made Ericson one of the better known teenagers in University City was his being named College Entrepreneur of the Year by Entrepreneur’s magazine. So, though Ericson “never in a million years” imagined himself attending Drexel, you’d be right to guess he now approves of the path he’s taken.

Ericson is the CEO and co-founder of 3SecondReceipts, a startup incubated at Drexel, a startup that is testing a point-of-sale system for digital receipts to save vendors on paper and ink.

The company’s beginnings started October 2008 back at Drexel and, like the South Street Special, involves pizza. As a freshman, Ericson and his college buddies would head out to a university dining hall for pizza, using their student ID cards in the closed system.

Everyone waited for a receipt, and then everyone immediately threw them out.

“I just wanted my pizza faster, but I also realized all this paper was being thrown out for these small transactions that are pretty immaterial to us,” Ericson says now. “There had to be a better way.”

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Ten Philadelphia Web sites then and now

Web designer in 1999

As the first decade of the 21st century closes, the Internet continues to change everything it touches.

Ten years ago, the Web was still working its way into everyday life of everyday people in Philadelphia. Now, it’s finding even more crevices of existence to transform. So, using the Internet Archive, we thought it might be a hoot to look back at the Web sites from ten Philadelphia technology institutions from the end of 1999.

It’s another in our completely irregular Top Ten Tuesday department.

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Shop Talk: Drexel MET-Lab pushing limits of audio and computer interaction

Drexel MET-Lab post-doctoral student Andrew McPherson preps his electronically-augmented piano.

On an early Friday afternoon, a dozen music technology students at Drexel University’s MET-Lab wrap up lunch before plunging back into work, scattered around computer stations in a cramped fourth floor laboratory.

Youngmoo Kim, a youthful and clean-cut professor, rushes up the elevator of the Bassone Building, on 31st and Market, to meet his students before launching into a presentation about the lab’s objectives, an exciting look at the future of music and entertainment technology, hence the name MET. The five-year-old lab is trying to create new technologies around music production, music recommendation and organization and music interfacing, four cores of its mission. Its most obvious, though, is to teach computers to use sound.

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Links: Penn graduate wins Nobel Prize, LTL Prints goes for Top 40 and More

• The Inquirer reports that a University of Pennsylvania graduate and pioneer in the technology that made digital cameras first possible will share a Nobel Prize for Physics.
• The Inqy also has a story on how the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia is trying to save beaucoup bucks by implementing more energy-efficient lighting.
• Philly Tech News reports that any mention of Google using a barcode image on its search engine to celebrate an anniversary for the technology can’t go without talking about its roots with Drexel University.

After the jump, someone from Camden posts on Tech Crunch, a catchy jingle from Old City and other tech stories of the week, included our best read piece of the week.

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Friday Q & A: Mark Loschiavo, Executive Director of the Baiada Center for Entrepreneurship at Drexel University

Mark Loschiavo, Executive Director of the Baiada Center for Entrepreneurship at Drexel University, believes the region’s universities are key to heightening the city’s profile when it comes to entrepreneurship.

“Part of our mission is to not only drive entrepreneurship, but entrepreneurial thinking,” he says.

Since 2001, The Baida Center has been a business incubator in Drexel’s Lebow School of Business that houses eight to ten companies on average, mostly winners of the school’s incubator competition. The center is also a big reason the school was named one of the top three entrepreneurship programs for graduate students in the country (three spots ahead of, ahem, Temple University).

Technically Philly sat down with the man behind the scenes: Executive Director and Senior Executive in Residence Mark P. Loschiavo and asked him how the incubator works and why, like the rest of us, Loschiavo has trouble pronouncing “Baiada.”

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Friday Q&A: Kelly Lee, Innovation Philadelphia President & CEO

Updated 9/11/09, 2:15 p.m.: Clarified summit tracks, noted “no frills” package clarification, and updated Philly panelists.

If it wasn’t for the first Global Creative Economy Convergence Summit in June 2006, Innovation Philadelphia may not have found it’s niche in the creative industries.

President and CEO Kelly Lee says that it was the attendees of the inaugural event, hosted three years ago, who inspired the economic development organization to shift focus from the broad spectrum of technology-based businesses to creative ones—art, design, web development, and others, in place of biotech and life sciences.

This year, Lee is spearheading the second of the summits, the well-marketed and polished 2009 Global Creative Economy Convergence Summit, which happens next month, October 5 to 6 at the Philadelphia Convention Center. [Full Disclosure: Technically Philly is a panelist for GCECS2009, "Creating a Culture of Entrepreneurial Journalism" on Oct. 6]

The summit focuses on economics, entrepreneurship, workforce, technologies and sustainability, five interdependent tracks that Lee says make up the creative economy and that cities and regions need to have a strategy for.

There are dozens of workshops, panels, roundtables and presentations that include innovators and leaders from across the globe and the Philly region, like keynotes from author Elizabeth Gilbert, entrepreneur Peter Shankman, game guru Jane McGonigal and global economic developer Randall Kempner.

From flyer to Web design, packed-schedule to text message update technology, there’s little doubt that the nonprofit has invested quite a bit in this year’s summit. The organization has even launched a series of glossy, high-def videos on the conference website this week that features local entrepreneurs and policy-makers who will attend. It certainly doesn’t appear that Innovation Philadelphia is taking GCECS2009 lightly.

But critics aren’t taking their words lightly, either, including high-profile members of our business and technology communities.

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Friday Tech Links: Philly parking application, PECO pushes for smart grid and More

In which we link out to the tech news from Philly and elsewhere (when it matters) that slips through the cracks and make it way fun. See others here.

We all heard rumors and stories and suggestions of it before.

But, yes, as seen on Innovation Philadelphia, a Drexel University business student led a team that developed a system in which the Philadelphia Parking Authority could locate parking violations using WiFi, using the same system that drivers could utilize to find parking with GPS and smart phones.

This is something we could absolutely get behind, considering we talked up something similar as a suggested iPhone application we’d like to see. That’s even if it would make it more likely to get a $36 parking violation for leaving a Chrysler LeBaron on Lombard Street in the Graduate Hospital area 10 minutes too long. Just sayin’.

After the jump, check out five other tech stories you need to read, including our best ready story and not including a video from the biggest geeks in town.

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