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Stephen Jacobs

While processing a box of donated items, Kirsten Feigel ’15 (museum studies), a cataloguer for Strong National Museum of Play, came across a rare piece of video game history—a demo of Super Mario Bros. 3 that was created in 1990 by id Software in an attempt to persuade Nintendo to partner with them to develop a version of the game for PC computers.

Early childhood development professionals often face challenges when teaching deaf and hard-of-hearing youth to read. A new project spearheaded by NTID is hoping to effectively bring literacy education to deaf and hard-of-hearing children in the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, and Fiji.

The Linux Foundation announced an intent to form the Open 3D Foundation to accelerate developer collaboration on 3D game and simulation technology. Stephen Jacobs, director of Open@RIT, is quoted about joining the collaboration.

WROC-TV talks to Stephen Jacobs, professor of interactive games and media, about the inductees into the Video Game Hall of Fame.

RIT’s open programs office has established a fellowship program to support faculty and staff with their work in the open community. Twenty-one projects have been selected from across the university for open work in everything from game development to ASL linguistics.

World Around You, a multilingual platform created by a team at NTID, was selected as the winner of the Inclusive Education award by the mEducation Alliance. The goal of World Around You, or WAY, is to increase global literacy for deaf children by providing greater access to sign languages, early-grade reading materials, vocabulary, reading instruction, and digital games.  

RIT’s open programs office has received a nearly $500,000 grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to measure and strengthen support of the faculty and staff who do work in the open community, including open source software, open data, open hardware, open educational resources, Creative Commons licensed work, open research, and other open work.

As the 2020 election results come in Nov. 3, civic hackers at RIT want to remind people about the power of technology and how it can be used for good. At RIT’s Election Day Hackathon, students, faculty, staff, and community members will analyze civic problems in the local community, state, and country and propose projects to address them.

WROC-TV talks to Stephen Jacobs, professor and director of Open@RIT, a new initiative dedicated to supporting all kinds of “open work.”

RIT is establishing Open@RIT, an initiative dedicated to supporting all kinds of “open work,” including — but not limited to — open source software, open data, open hardware, open educational resources, Creative Commons licensed work, and open research.

NTID is one of four international innovators selected to create cost-effective packages of high-quality accessible children’s books in languages children use and understand to serve regions of the world where children have few or no books for preschool or kindergarten.
 

As part of an interactive games and media course, 12 RIT students made cardboard and digital pinball machines designed around themes of their own choosing. For the final exam, students brought their creations to The Strong National Museum of Play and had visitors give their physical and virtual pinball machines a test drive.