Meet the Edcite Team: Intern Edition

Posted on by edciteteam

Our monthly series Meet the Edcite Team continues! Each month we feature a different member of our team. This month we are featuring our intern, Heyaw Meteke.

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Heyaw Meteke (right) with team member Brian McIntosh

Heyaw recently created a Growth Report for our Edcite Schools platform. It allows administrators to chart growth in assignment averages and look for trends among groups of students. It is a great tool for schools who pre and post assess with the same assignment.

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Read below to learn more about Heyaw and his work at Edcite.
Where do you go to school? What are you studying? 

I’m currently a senior at Gateway High School in San Francisco.  My favorite class is physics because I can see how the math and concepts I learn apply to real life.  Our end of the year project was constructing a rocket that can safely return a raw egg after launch.

What brought you to Edcite?

I came to Edcite to gain an understanding of a company in the tech sector as well as building skills in a team environment that will help me become a better programmer.

IMG_8936Tell us about what you’ve been working on during your internship.

I’m currently working on a character recognition application which hopefully in the future will be able to parse and understand handwritten math equations.  This can be a major feature for devices like tablets and phones where users can easily write it instead of awkwardly typing math expressions with the keyboard.

What do you plan to do after high school?

I am planning on going to college to pursue a major in computer engineering and want to be an embedded engineer.  I am interested in that field because I enjoy working on hardware and devices that interact with the physical world.

What Heyaw’s co-workers say:

We’re very happy to have Heyaw help us prototype new features for Edcite’s student tools.  He’s been great at taking machine learning ideas and quickly implementing them in Python. Quite impressive for a high school student.   -Tony Thomas, Edcite Co-Founder

It’s been fun to have Heyaw as a co-worker after having him as a student in my computer science class. I have enjoyed getting to know Heyaw better outside of school. He has already built a report used in Edcite and is working on a project that uses machine learning to recognize handwriting. His willingness to dive into new projects is impressive and contagious, and I learn new things from him each week.   -Brian McIntosh, Edcite Project Manager and Teacher

Continue reading Meet the Edcite Team: Intern Edition

Meet the Edcite Team: Intern Edition

Posted on by edciteteam

We’re excited to share a new monthly series: Meet the Edcite Team! Each month we will feature a different member of our team by asking them a set of questions.

This month we are featuring our fabulous summer intern Maya Ravichandran. Read on to meet Maya!

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Where do you go to school? What are you studying? 

I go to University of Southern California, or USC, and I’m studying Computer Science.

What brought you to Edcite?

I loved that Edcite gives teachers an opportunity to improve students’ learning experience and gives them a free and easy way to do it. I really connected with the mission, and being a part of this team is definitely rewarding.

Tell us about what you’ve been working on during your internship.

I have been creating new question types for teachers to use in their assignments! Specifically, I created a drawing question type where students can draw their answers. I am also working on a drawing and vocabulary game.

Which teacher in school had the most impact on you and why?

shutterstock_311465798.jpgI would say my newspaper advisor had the most impact on me. My favorite and most memorable experience in high school was working for three years on the newspaper staff. My advisor was always open to talk and gave excellent advice. He was an excellent teacher and perfected the balance between leading and allowing students to run the newspaper independently.

show don't tellDo you have any advice for teachers about how students want to learn today?

Students don’t want to just be presented with information. For me, in order to fully understand something, I have to be completely immersed in it. In other words, show not tell. The more interactive and hands-on a student’s learning experience is, the better he or she remembers it in the future. I still remember all the quiz tournaments and group projects, but all the Powerpoint lectures start to fade quickly.

What is your favorite movie or book? Why?

My favorite books are both by Khaled Hosseini: The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns. He writes so beautifully, and his stories are so heartbreaking and haunting.

Do you have a favorite quote?

One of many favorite quotes: “Sometimes remembering will lead to a story, which makes it forever. That’s what stories are for. Stories are for joining the past to the future. Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can’t remember how you got from where you were to where you are. Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story.” – Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried

shutterstock_383833837.jpgWhich is the better half: Northern or Southern California? 

This is a hard one! I go to school in Southern California, but I was born and raised in the Bay Area. I’m going have to say Northern California because I’ve got to stay true to my roots. 🙂

Name three things you can’t live without.

1) My phone. Unfortunately, I don’t think I can survive without it, literally and figuratively.

2) Music. It’s the best way to relax and focus.

3) Chocolate. No explanation needed.

Thank you, Maya, for all that you’ve done this summer as an Edcite intern! 

Stay tuned for Maya’s drawing question type on Edcite, and be sure to check back next month to meet another member of the Edcite team!