Question: Team Members Full Names:
Answer: Carolina Liliana Cáceres Ahumada, Robinson Alberto Guajardo Salas, Sebastián Néstor Acevedo Carrasco, Frederick Benjamín Mancilla Espinoza

Question: Title of Project:
Answer: Prismo

Question: Project Overview:
Answer: We've noticed that technology is being used to improve learning skills at the schools, not only for the senior courses, but also for the little kids at primary or even pre-primary. So we notest that the interaction between children and computers was sometimes inadequate and difficult for them. Besides it usually consists on one kid working alone on his or her assignment, and this worries us, we are in a social world, we do not think that this scheme would teach children how to function in a collaborative environment. So we offer a solution named Prismo that allows more than one user at the same time in order to generate team work. Prismo is an educative software based on new ways of interacting with the computer, you will no longer need a mouse or a keyboard, you can simply speak words or show images to the computer and it will understand you. This is meant to improve social skills in children by encouraging them to work as a team and to collaborate with each other in order to complete activities that Prismo will provide.

Question: Technology/Software Used:
Answer: * OS: Windows Vista * IDE: Visual Studio 2008 * Framework .NET 3.5 * Design Tools: Expression Studio 2.0 * GUI: WPF * Speech Recognition: SAPI 3.5 * Pattern Recognition: DirectShow

Question: Inspiration: What inspired your team to enter the Microsoft Imagine Cup and why did you choose the Software Design competition?
Answer: First of all we want it to incorporate a global vision to our solution, and also would like to be part of a great deal of cultural exchange that this competition allows. Besides, not every day you get to go to another country, specially not Egypt. All this feedback will help us to improve Prismo and to make a better tool for kids, the idea is to create a business that provides innovative and interesting solutions to a variety of problems that have not been properly addressed yet.

Question: Team History: How did your team meet?
Answer: We are all students of the same career at the same University. Robinson, Sebastián and Fréderick belong to 2004 generation, so they met as classmates. On the other hand i, Carolina, belong to 2005 generation, so i met the guys on my free time. We've always been close and because of that we decided to make this project together (initially this was an assignment for a signature called Software Development Workshop). But in order to complete this assignment we needed funding, and that's when we heard about a contest called Entrepreneurs .NET that was hosted by UTFSM, 3ie and Microsoft. We won the competition and gain resources to develope a better project that will eventually become a business. It's important to mention that 3ie is a business incubator that encourages students to create their first enterprise in the real world by supporting development of new and innovating ideas.

Question: Team Experience: What experience did your team have with Software Design before competing in the Imagine Cup?
Answer: Not much experience really, mostly theory (learned in classes) and some projects that came as assignments (such as the project that gave birth to Prismo). This is with regards to Sebastián, Fréderick and me (Carolina). Robinson is the most experienced in this area because he worked for over a year developing systems for companies in the country.

Question: Highlights: What has been the best part of the Imagine Cup competition to date?
Answer: That's easy, the best part of this competition so far is to have been selected to represent Chile at Imagine Cup 2009 and all that implies, such as the trip to Egypt, the acknowledgment of our hard work and the chance to be part of something that concerns the entire world and that produces a real effect on people.

Question: Inspiration: How did your team come up with your submission? Include which Millennium Development Goal inspired your solution.
Answer: We were informed of the existence of Imagine Cup by Alejandro Pacheco during one of the presentations we made about Prismo at the 3ie (this is the entity that hosted de Entrepreneurs .NET contest along with Microsoft and UTFSM, and it's in charge of acting as an incubator of future business). At this occasion Pachecho told us that our solution was a perfect fit to the goals of this year's Imagine Cup, so we investigated about it and decided to participate.

Question: Challenges: What personal or technological challenges did your team face while developing your submission?
Answer: We had to rebuild our software (we had a prototype builded for the assignment i mentioned before) and this was done during summer vacations (2008-2009) from january to april. So we worked the entire summer. This was a great challenge, mainly because we had to be up at 9 am every day. It was worth it though. But the technological challenge has been even greater, we had to learn really fast how to use Visual Studio, WPF, Expression, DirectShow, SAPI...it was really tiring, and after that we had to implement our solution, wich is always something difficult to achieve, we are still making changes and testing given that documentation is not always enough.

Question: Future Plans: What does your team plan on doing after the Worldwide Finals in Cairo, Egypt? Do you plan to use your project to launch a new business?
Answer: The next step is to set the basis to a new business, we are aiming to distribute our software in Chile to be tested in schools and hopefully to be implemented as a basic learning tool for kids. Since we already know how the technology works we would also like to create new software with different approaches.

Question: Links to more information (i.e. website, blog):
Answer: We are currently working on our blog at http://www.ogmiostec.net/blog