Valerie Landau is an American designer, author and educator. She has filed two patents along with her colleague and mentor Douglas Engelbart

Douglas Engelbart

Douglas Carl Engelbart is an American inventor, and an early computer and internet pioneer. He is best known for his work on the challenges of human-computer interaction, resulting in the invention of the computer mouse, and the development of hypertext, networked computers, and precursors to GUIs...

. Their most recent patent (filed April 2010) describes multitouch interface for chorded text entry. The new patent is inspired by Engelbart's early work developing the Chorded keyboard

Chorded keyboard

A keyset or chorded keyboard is a computer input device that allows the user to enter characters or commands formed by pressing several keys together, like playing a "chord" on a piano...

. They also recently released an application for the iPhone for chorded texting called "TipTapSpeech".

Engelbart and Landau also collaborated on writing the book "The Engelbart Hypothesis: Dialogs with Douglas Engelbart" along with co-author Eileen Clegg

Eileen Clegg

Eileen Clegg is a visual journalist and founder of Visual Insight where she creates visual maps of ideas by bringing together her experience with journalism, and art, which is part of an evolving visual language...

.

Landau is also a co-founder of Program for the Future, a non-profit organization that promotes Engelbart's vision of Collective Intelligence. She also is author of the seminal book on online education "Developing an Effective Online Course" and earned the "Online Pioneer" award.

Landau, also known for her work in multimedia at Round World Media and for her work mentoring students in a three year project studying and applying the Engelbart Hypothesis. and created an online archive of Engelbart related events and videos

She is an instructional and interaction designer and has worked on many award-winning projects, educational games and online courses.

Early life

Landau's parents are poet Nina Serrano

Nina Serrano

Nina Serrano is an American poet, writer, storyteller, and independent media producer who lives in Oakland, California. She is the author of Heartsongs: The Collected Poems of Nina Serrano and Pass it on!: How to start your own senior storytelling program in the schools...

 and filmmaker Saul Landau

Saul Landau

Saul Landau is journalist, filmmaker, and commentator. He is Professor Emeritus at California State University, Pomona. He is a senior Fellow at and Vice Chair of the Institute for Policy Studies.-Career:...

. She co-founded Round World Media along with her brother, four-time Grammy nominated music producer, Greg Landau

Greg Landau

Greg Landau is a San Francisco-based music and video producer, and an instructor of music and Latin American Studies focused on the social movements that produced revolutionary music and art. He is a five-time Grammy nominee who has produced over 40 CDs and numerous film scores including serving as...

. She attended Heroes de Varsovia, Escuela Basica en el Campo, High School in Cuba, where students engaged in agricultural labor as well as academic study.

She began her career working under the legendary Brazilian educator Paulo Freire

Paulo Freire

Paulo Reglus Neves Freire was a Brazilian educator and influential theorist of critical pedagogy.-Biography:...

 while working on the literacy campaign in Nicaragua.

She graduated from the Harvard Graduate School of Education from the Department of Human Development and Psychology with an emphasis in Technology in Education in 1996.

External links

• Program for the Futurehttp://programforthefuture.org/
• The Engelbart Hypothesishttp://engelbartbook.com/
• TipTap.mobi Chorded texting http://tiptap.mobi/
• Fig Leaf Technologieshttp://figleaftechnologies.com/
• Round World Mediahttp://roudworldmedia.com/