Frederic Portoraro
Ph.D. (incomplete) Computational
Logic, University of Toronto
M.A. Computational Logic, University of Toronto
B.Sc. Computing Science, Honours, University of Toronto
I am a Senior Consultant, Learning Technologies Architect,
advising organizations on the design and implementation of
learning-oriented systems, and currently working on a long-term contract with Nexient Learning, Canada’s
largest education company.
Prior to joining Nexient
I was the National Director of Information Systems at Executrain Canada
(later acquired by CDI Education and then by Nexient) and responsible for
the company's learning and corporate computing systems in ten cities.
Contact Information
The best way to contact me is via email at:
| Nexient-related
Business : fportoraro@nexientlearning.com Tel: 416-964-8688 ext 2525 |
Other
and Academic : fred.portoraro@symlog.ca Tel: 416-923-5230 |
This is me, at the Hewlett-Packard Canadian Headquarters in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada. The occasion was the launch of a Canada-wide strategic education initiative (of which I was the learning architect) sponsored by Microsoft and HP that ran in conjunction with the launch of Microsoft SQL Server.
Professional and Research Interests
Applications of computing systems in education;
learning management systems; artificial intelligence (AI) and learning
environments; intelligent tutoring systems; automated reasoning and its
applications in education; automated theorem proving in natural
deduction.
Current Projects
Private Industry. With
Nexient, I am currently leading the design of a new architecture for
the company's next-generation learning portals. The work involves the
implementation of a service-oriented architecture that integrates our
enterprise learning management system with a growing family of
remotely-hosted learning portals managed by our clients.
During
the Spring of 2006, I worked with Microsoft in the design of their new
Microsoft Official Distance Learning (MODL) approach at delivering
instructor-led courses in a blended format centered around web-based
online classrooms, and I'm currently working on its implementation for
Nexient.
Academia. I am working on the implementation
of an education-based web site to support the teaching of mathematical
logic. Besides providing a rich user interface and a wealth of online
exercises, the site incorporates a variety of automated theorem provers
that are used to provide guidance to students in the construction of
natural deduction proofs, in the building of truth-trees / tableaux, and
to check the correctness of English-to-logic
symbolizations.
I enjoy teaching in both academic and corporate settings. I typically teach intensive five-day workshops for corporate software engineers and business analysts in the areas of object-oriented analysis, design and implementation, objected-oriented languages, software testing, logical database design, and the applications of discrete mathematics to software engineering. I have also lectured for many years courses in discrete mathematics (EPSP Program, University of Waterloo / CDI Education), relational database management (ditto), mathematical logic (Dept of Philosophy, University of Toronto), linear algebra (Dept of Mathematics, University of Toronto), and others.
Selected Publications
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“Automated Reasoning”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2005.
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"Strategic Construction of Fitch-style Proofs", Studia Logica, Vol. 60, No. 1, pp. 45-66, 1998.
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"Symlog: Automated Advice in Fitch-style Proof Construction", Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Automated Deduction, Nancy, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, A. Bundy, ed., Vol. 814, pp. 802-806, Springer-Verlag, 1994.
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Logic with Symlog: Learning Symbolic Logic by Computer, 561 pp., Prentice-Hall, 1994. Co-authored with R. E. Tully
I am a member of the ACM, the IEEE, and the Association for Automated Reasoning (AAR).