 Think Tech Hawaii, civil engagement lives here. My name is Briana Vitas and this is my first show. And today we're going to be talking about CES for Pono, which is an outreach program which is going to stem all across the basis of computer science, but we're mostly working on 3D printing right now. And here to talk with me today about that is the wonderful woman who runs it all, Gabriela Artigas, who happens to be my computer science professor. Thank you for joining me today Gabi. It's my pleasure. How are you doing Bri? Good, how are you? Good, good. I'm a little nervous, but it's fine, we'll work through it. Yeah, it'll be great. All right, so let's just jump right into it. Tell me about yourself. Well, my name is Gabriela Artigas. I come from Argentina. I came to HPU in 1987 as a student athlete. So I play volleyball for the school and I focus on computer science eventually through, I went through a different path to get to my major and then I moved on to do my masters in information systems. And when I graduated I started teaching right away at HPU. So what drew you to computer science? Well, my first love has been teaching all my life. So I was trained to be a physical education teacher and then sports happened to break me to Hawaii Pacific University. And once that I was here I tried to look for a major that would lead me into the future. And when I started to think about computer science it made sense because I saw at that time that computers were going to be in every field in the future. So I knew this was 1987, so PCs were just coming out. It wasn't what it is today. So I had some foresight to imagine what it was going to be in the future. That's awesome. That's really great. There's not a lot of people that can do that. Yes, we see the new technology coming in all the time. It's like, oh, it'll get there eventually. It's very rare to find someone that's like, this is going to be a thing. I want to be the person to help people learn this. So that's awesome. It's very honorable. Yes. I thought that eventually I would be a mom and I wanted to know what my children would be doing. And if I didn't jump at that time when I had the opportunity and it was just coming out, I wouldn't have an idea this day what was going on in any environment. So do you feel like you know what's going on in this day and age more than other people do because you know how to code and you're so great with computers? Well, I don't know about everybody else. I can only speak about myself. I know that I have a little bit of confidence and I can take care of things at home by myself. I'm not intimidated by a big purchase regarding technology or in plugging in things or talking to the tech people about what's going on with my internet connection and things like that. So I feel that I can survive better than if I hadn't had my training. Oh, OK. That's good. Survival is always important. So did you start learning how to code here at HPU? Yes. Oh, that's awesome. I was scared of turning the computer on when I first started and I was scared that the files will disappear or that I would make the computer burn out and explode when I first started. And we had a very small computer lab that had eight PCs and it was running DOS environment. So we didn't have Windows yet even and it was the C prompt to copy files and things like that. Wow. That's so awesome. So you've seen HPU grow from the very beginning up until now. All the technologies that they've brought and everything. Yeah. I have grown personally together with HPU, I would say. That's awesome. Yeah. So obviously the technology has gotten better and we have new things but what's your favorite new thing that they've adapted or the thing that's stuck out the most? Well, to be honest, when I was going through college, the technology on the desktop computers were not up to par with where my interest was because I was more interested in what would be graphic design and applications. So I fell a little bit behind and the opportunities that I had with my academics did not match what I wanted to do. But now I enjoy doing it as a hobby. So I enjoy video editing and I don't know, making videos for YouTube or playing with Instagram to see what the marketing and Instagram is all about and things like that. So you like to mess around with things a lot, huh? Yeah, I like my gadgets. Yes, I do. But that kind of explains quite a bit about you. Now I know why you enjoyed putting the 3D printer together so much. Yeah, the 3D printing is blossoming to a good point. It didn't move as fast as I wanted it to go this semester, but I really enjoy working with the high school girls, putting together the printer and planning together. It's our club instead of just my club. So that's something very special. Do you want to know more about me or more about you? Yes, you can tell me a little bit more about you. What else would you like to know about me? So I know you were a student here and now you're obviously a professor here. How did that all happen? Did you just love HP so much that you're like, I don't want to leave or is it just? Well, like I said, I was always interested in education. So teaching has always been my passion. When I was in elementary or middle school and high school, whenever we had to give an oral presentation, I really enjoyed the whole process. And I was told in my senior year that it didn't matter what subject, but I should teach. And that's where my heart is. So when I was going through my path at HPU and Hawaii and trying to find my way through academics and what I was going to do in my next step when I graduated, I was also working part-time at HPU. So I was able to see behind the scenes what the professors were doing to get ready for classes and things like that. I was doing photocopying for them and keeping track of the mail and things like that. So I got to know a little bit behind the scenes, what it was like, and it seemed like a good match when I was invited to teach during a summer course. I was getting trained to become an academic advisor and then there were changes in the university and I wasn't going to be able to stay as an academic advisor. So I was offered pretty much a teaching job. And that's when the two passions merge, right? So the teaching and technology. And since I had a really good experience as a student and in the transition into living in Hawaii, which is a subject of its own, moving from another country to live in Hawaii and the United States, it's very special. But as I was going through all that process, I enjoyed it so much and I had so many people affecting me in a positive way that I wanted to be one of those positive influences in incoming freshmen at HPU. So I feel like it was a blessing to be able to stay at HPU and in a way to give back to the community that gave me so much. So that's why I stayed. Oh, okay. So what's your favorite thing about teaching here? Why do you stay is what I'm asking. Yeah, I stay because my favorite thing is the interaction with students in the classroom and my passion is teaching beginners. So I always thought that the first impression that a student has in academics is the most important. It can make a difference in helping a student stay or go away. So my hope, I'm not sure if I successfully do it, but my hope is to be that positive influence on students that they feel encouraged to learn and to stay in academics because academics are very important. They are indeed. So you mentioned that it was really hard for you to move here from Argentina. How did that happen? It happened by a random coincidence that I ended up in Hawaii. I'm not saying that it was difficult for me, but anytime you moved to a new place, you have to go through a whole bunch of adjustments. So when I was little and I was playing sports in Argentina, in Argentina we don't have scholarships for students. So the athlete has a hard time continuing once that the athlete goes into college because the college professors do not understand the training and the coach doesn't want you to miss any practice for your academics. So the two activities conflict with one another. So when I was about 12, I saw my first athletic match on TV and it was UCLA against another university and I asked my parents, what is this, a university playing against another university? And they explained to me that in the United States there was this thing called Student Athletes. So since that point on, I was always thinking that it would be wonderful if I could combine the two and have a scholarship in the United States. But I didn't know it would ever happen. And when I was finishing my training to become a PE teacher in Argentina and I was playing volleyball and I met a girl from Hawaii that randomly came to play for my team. And we became close friends. I was the only one who spoke English in the team, so it was the natural fit to practice together and I was always translating for her and things like that. I'm only 5'3 and volleyball is known as a sport for tall people and this girl is 5'11 so I thought everybody was tall like her and I was very shy about asking if she thought I could come to Hawaii and play volleyball. And when I started talking with her about it, she said yeah and when she came back to Hawaii during the holidays, she talked to the coach for HPU and they worked out a scholarship for me and I ended up coming to Hawaii with my younger brother that ended up playing soccer for HPU and my parents. So it was a family move and I gave up a pretty decent life. So I left a lot of comfortable things in my own environment to come to the new adventure thing. But it went well and it was worth it. Hawaii feels like home now. Yeah, that's awesome. So does your family still live here? My parents ended up transitioning back into living in Argentina and my younger brother lives with his wife and children in North Carolina right now and he lived in different spots on the mainland but he's my closest relative physically and emotionally but they're on the east coast so it's a little far. Does he come down a lot still? They came over only a couple of times since when they got married they came for their honeymoon and then a few years ago they came with their children so their children could see Hawaii too. Bianca and Lucas, I feel like I should mention them. Yeah, give them a quick shout out. Yeah. Okay, well we will take a little break and then when we come back we can talk all about the club. Sounds great. All right. Hi everyone. I'm Andrea Gabrieli. I'm the host for Young Talent's Making Way here on Think Tech Hawaii. We talk every Tuesday at 11 a.m. about things that matter to tech, matter to science, to the people of Hawaii with some extraordinary guests, the students of our schools who are participating in science fair. So Young Talent's Making Way every Tuesday at 11 a.m. only on Think Tech Hawaii. Mahalo. Hi, I'm Ethan Allen, host on Think Tech Hawaii of Pacific Partnerships in Education. Every other Tuesday afternoon at 3 p.m. I hope you'll join us as we explore the value, the accomplishments and the challenges of education here in the Pacific Islands. We are back and now we're going to talk with Gabriela Artigas again about CS Propono, an outreach program that she is kind of creative, but I know it's kind of a spin off from some other stuff that you guys had done previously. So how did this whole thing come about? So about a year and a half ago I was approached by my department chair requesting that I started an outreach program for high school students and primarily we have the priory here downtown that is kind of our sister's school and we started primarily for them but it was open to anyone that wanted to participate. The goal was to bring girls to learn about coding, being that females are underrepresented in the discipline. There are a lot of programs that encourage that. So there is a nationwide program called Girls Who Code that provide that service and they provide services online that you can use to teach programming. So we started with that because it was something that already had a nationwide structure and supposedly it gave you the materials. Now teaching full time as a professor and having this other duty was a little bit challenging because as a professor you're used to running the show. So you're giving the material and you have the book and you said, okay, this is how I'm going to go about teaching this and this program you had to do what they told you to do. And that's not an issue. The issue was the time in which the material would be given to us because the whole thing is run by what is it called, people that do it for free volunteers. Thank you. So the volunteers are busy on their own probably and the material was not popping up at the right time as we needed it. So that was an additional challenge that provided me a little bit of stress. So I decided to go on my own program because the girls that we had they were already taking programming in their own school. So they were pretty sophisticated. So I wanted them to have an experience of coding on their own. They were using a similar prepackage program at school. So I wanted them to have the experience of coding and running the program in their own computer. So we started doing that on the second session and at the end of the first session. And then so a year ago is when we started the club and then last semester we had a shorter session and by the end I started to talk to them about 3D printing and ask them if they would be interested, if they would continue to participate if we got involved in 3D printing. And they said yes and they would like to see it. So I have a colleague that is doing that as a hobby and it's located in a place that when you walk by his office you get to see the 3D printer going. So if you're interested in anything that is visual you are drawn to it. And that's how I brought the 3D printer to the classroom and had the first experience with the girls. And they really enjoyed it. And I thought it would be good to try to provide some kind of service. And that's where the name CS for Pono comes to play a role. So CS for computer science and Pono doing the right thing. So HPU is doing the right thing by bringing girls to the classroom to learn to program and we as a group we should do something good for others. So I learned about an organization that is called Enabling the Future. And what they do is they put together people that have the technology to be able to 3D print with people that need prosthesis. So they provide the code and you use their code or 3D printing can be done either by programming or by using graphic design software. So they provide both styles of 3D products and you can decide which one you want to print and then you send it to them and then they can give it to somebody who needs it. So that's in a nutshell what the program is about and how it happened. Okay. So what were some of your goals for this program? So the first goal is to have the experience. So give the girls the experience of programming for 3D printing and printing something. And we achieved a little bit of that in the first experience. So one of the challenges about 3D printing is that it's very time consuming to print. So if you have a two hour time slot per week with a group of girls it is really difficult to have the experience of programming and printing on the same session. So what we did was one session I gave them some pointers and they're amazing because they're so used to using technology in the classroom that they grab their laptops and start doing their thing. You give them a little pointer and they go off with it. So my goal was that they programmed something similar to scrabble tiles so they would have like a shape, a geometric shape and a character and they did variations of that. And then we printed it ahead of time for the second session and then they, but we brought the printer and we printed in the classroom in a lower resolution so they could see the printer going. And if anything fell during the class time I would already have the trinket that they coded the previous week for them to take. They loved it and we watched some videos about the prosthesis and they said that they wanted to come back and they wanted to do it. So the next goal was to, I was given a grant to purchase a couple printers. It is more economical to purchase them as a kit. So that's what you know about and last Friday we brought one of the kids to the classroom and we put together part of it. The first printer is already ready to go but I don't have the guts to test it yet. So for this semester the goal was to build the 3D printers and make sure that they run and hopefully print our first prosthesis which is made of two parts. One is the pieces that you print in the 3D printer made out of plastic that comes out in a filament that is similar to a hot glue gun but it's programmed to print with a certain pattern. So the filament comes in and it becomes gooey and it prints in a certain pattern. And that's one of the parts of the prosthesis would be all these pieces that you print on the 3D printer. And then the other part will be the hardware that will be the cables and the velcro so the person can put it together and they could have some kind of like joints in their hand that you build. They have different models for different kinds of characteristics of the arm. So the goal is to put together one this semester and ship it to the organization and their claim is that once you ship a prosthesis that is put together if it is following their standards then you can start a chapter of their organization at your institution. And once you start a chapter of the organization at your institution you can approach, you can receive people yourself and measure them and customize the prosthesis to their individual needs locally. So that's a future goal. It's a little bit ambitious because similarly to Girls Who Code it's run by a lot of volunteers so we have to see how it goes but that's the goal. Okay so end goal like in the long run what you want to do is have people that need prosthetics here in Hawaii come to us and that we would measure them and make it for them. Really that could be one of the things while students continue to learn to program with a project that is tangible and we're providing service to others. Okay that's so cool I didn't know that we were going to be able to do that. That's awesome. Yeah. So is there when we get accepted to them what's it called the chapter when we get the chapter is there anything else like that we get to do with that like can you explain that a little bit more what that is? Well I don't know exactly what the rights and privileges that you gain by creating a chapter other than having the golden star that you are approved by them and having people approach you directly. If you are not a chapter then the organization needs to put the parties together so we would build the prosthesis for anybody and they would choose who they send it to. But having a local chapter would allow us to serve our local community but I don't know how that's going to run once that it takes place. Okay. Yeah. One step at a time. Just like coding. For sure. One step at a time. Yes. You have to do the ifs before you do the elses. So we did start to put together another 3D printer. Okay. First off this woman is amazing. She okay she got the kit and I kind of like helped her like open it and we were gonna start putting it together and we just didn't have time. There was like a million pieces like spread out on like a table like twice this size and we just looked at her like where are we gonna start and then we ran out of time. We just ran out of time like going through the manuals and everything. And we could see that it was very well organized because as good developers these people they send the kit in packages that are very clearly marked and if you have the same mindset you can get into their heads and understand what they were doing. So each package was numbered and for each different part of the printer you would use that package that is numbered like that. So they make it a little bit easier for you but I remember we were talking about it and I don't I still don't know how you did it all by yourself. I remember well this past Friday the club we got together and we put together some of the parts of the second printer but the first one you put together by yourself. Yes. Do you want to talk about that experience with us? Well one of the advantages that I have is that when I was when I grew up with two older brothers so one is eight years older than me and the other one eleven years older and both of them studied to be electrical engineers. So I saw them playing with circuits and things and soldering when I was very young and I was intrigued by that. So having this kit even though I never put my hands on another kit before and I don't know if how many more I want to put my hands on having seen them inspire me to want to do that sometime in the future. So this was just putting pieces together but it was very time consuming and considering that this needs to work efficiently to be able to print you don't want to miss a screw or miss a little piece when you're putting it together so you don't want to lose anything you don't want to damage anything and I was very stressed out so I did it during spring break when I wasn't teaching or grading or anything like that. There was the most difficult component is where the extruder is where the fluid comes through so where the extruder goes there are a whole bunch of little pieces that hold it in place and then you have to connect it to one of the axles and because this extruder has to be able to move this way this way and this way so as a 3D the X Y and Z right and that extruder needed a lot of pieces to hold it together into place and when I was ready to put it in then the screw would be loose and it wouldn't it wouldn't grab it wouldn't grab and I go what's going on and it turned out that there's this square pieces that need to go inside so then the screw would catch so I left that for the next day so after having my coffee in the morning I with patience I backtracked a few steps and got that together and then the other highlight was when all the cables because each each part of the printer has its own motor and each motor needs to be plugged into this sort of motherboard and you have to be careful how you lay them out so they don't snap when the 3D printer is running so then you have to plug them in on this motherboard and that was very stressful so I had a friend another computer science teacher helped me with that and she goes oh Gabby I don't know how you do this I would be very stressed if I had to do this by myself it's a lot of detail yes it is and a lot of steps so is coding so those two kind of go ahead they're very similar procedural yes so we are running out of time unfortunately I thought we had more time but before we do that I want to ask if there's anyone out there that wants to join how how will they how would they go about that we have an email that everybody can write to if they're interested gwc standing for girls who code even though we're not in that organization anymore we still have that email because it's an hpu email so gwc at hpu edu and the I would be the one reading the emails and you can write asking questions asking to join we normally go by the semester so the next session will start September September 5th we normally run it on Fridays so Friday afternoons after the high school girls are out of school and this is right now it's only for girls so and we encourage all girls from public schools 12 to 17 to join us even freshmen in college if they want to participate they're welcome to come in and they're more the merrier that's great yeah all right well you heard that if you want to come join us and play around with a 3d printer learn how to code create all these cool things and make prosthetics with us feel free to come on down email us um and then you can have fun with us uh that will be it for today's show thank you for joining me I'm Brianna Vitas and this has been my wonderful guest Gabriella RT thank you thank you for having me thank you