{"id":1919,"date":"2022-08-10T03:52:03","date_gmt":"2022-08-10T01:52:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.zitnik.si\/?p=1919"},"modified":"2022-08-10T03:56:19","modified_gmt":"2022-08-10T01:56:19","slug":"research-visit-at-the-university-of-south-florida-and-road-trip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.zitnik.si\/?p=1919","title":{"rendered":"Research visit at the University of South Florida and road trip"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I am collaborating with my friend, prof. dr. Glenn Gordon Smith, from the College of Education, University of South Florida. He is a professor in Instructional Technology, interested into reading comprehension and educational aspects of teaching, while I am interested in natural language processing. We started collaboration on automated natural language response scoring in Glenn’s IMapBook project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Glenn got a Fulbright scholarship and was in Slovenia for more than a year, while I got funded a bilateral project. This visit happened in summer 2019 and I travelled alone as my girlfriend was pregnant and thus we cancelled her flight. I became a happy father to a wonderful daughter Zoja in February 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I flew to Miami airport (August 4), took a rent-a-car, drove around Miami beach in the evening, and slept at Bikini hostel. The next day I visited Miami beach and swam in the sea. I was to early to enter Dolphin mall outlet, so I stopped by at the Falls outlet and checked on Abercrombie and Victoria shops. I continued via the longest bridge – 6.79 mile bridge to the most southern point of the US – Southern most buoy<\/a>. Cuba is roughly 90 miles away from this point in Key West part. I went to a local Starbucks, swam in the sea and drove back North, where I slept at Fairway Inn Florida Homestead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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First part: Miami to Tampa<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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For the day after that I booked an airboat tour by the Gator park<\/a>. That was really an experience I recommend to everybody. After that I stopped in a shopping outlet, where I bought some Abercrombie sweatshirts and some stuff in Victoria, and checked in at Ramada Temple Terrace in Tampa<\/a>. This was nice affordable motel with a pool and good breakfast. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Almost until the end of the trip I was working with Glenn. As I took a bit time off at the beginning and end, we took some over-hours. The result was a published journal paper and prepared plan for further collaboration (one additional journal paper from that plan is also currently under review). In the mean time, I also visited Glenn’s home, went to a local YMCA with him. We also went to a local open space with concerts and food, where I tried to eat a gator meat. On a weekend afternoon I drove to Clearwater and walked around Sunsets at Pier 60<\/a>. The views, atmosphere and beach resorts are great there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In Tampa I visited (August 16) the old town – YBOR city visitor center, walked around Tampa Riverwalk, where was a new food courd – Ulele<\/a>. Then I drove by Bayshore Boulevard and left Tampa. I drove towards Orlando where I first visited the Titanic’s artifact exhibition<\/a>. It is quite an impressive museum. I still remember how cold the water was people from Titanic fell in – I could not stand holding that icy artefact for more than two seconds. That day I just had enough time to visit a shopping center <\/a>and went to sleep in Atlantic Ocean Palm Inn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Second part: Tampa to Kennedy Space Center<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The next day I visited Daytona Beach and went for a tour at Speedway. Although I am not a fan, it was a pleasure being there. After that I drove to and walked around the Ponce de leon Inlet lighthouse and museum<\/a>. There is an old lighthouse, park and beach houses. As Glenn suggested, I reserved my room at Cocoa beach (Motel 6), which is quite popular. Of course, the beach is great, as elsewhere in Florida, but there they have a long wharf with numerous restaurants and beer services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The last visit I made to, was NASA Visitor Center (Kennedy Space Center). There were some nice exhibitions. I was especially amused by rocket launch spaces – they are enormous, also machines that move rockets from hangars to launch spaces. Still, I was expecting more. There were many attractions for families and children though. If I compare, I had a better experience in Houston’s NASA center. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Third part: back to Miami<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

For my last night I stayed at Miami Hostels, 3 km from the airport. The owner seemed to be very open and talkative. I believe he changed his luxurious house into hostel just to have possibility to get to know and talk to many people. I also worked most of the last afternoon and evening there. The last day (August 19), my flight departed at 6:40pm from Miami International Airport. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am collaborating with my friend, prof. dr. Glenn Gordon Smith, from the College of Education, University of South Florida. He is a professor in Instructional Technology, interested into reading comprehension and educational aspects of teaching, while I am interested in natural language processing. We started collaboration on automated natural…<\/p>\n

Continue readingResearch visit at the University of South Florida and road trip<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1987,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,21,28],"tags":[41,43,48],"class_list":["post-1919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-free-time","category-research","category-travel","tag-research","tag-travel","tag-usa","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.zitnik.si\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.zitnik.si\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.zitnik.si\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.zitnik.si\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.zitnik.si\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1919"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.zitnik.si\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1919\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2058,"href":"https:\/\/blog.zitnik.si\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1919\/revisions\/2058"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.zitnik.si\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.zitnik.si\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.zitnik.si\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.zitnik.si\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}