Educators with a laptop will have an opportunity to do some hands on exploration of the free coding program Scratch (from MIT Media Lab) and the coding resources at the web site www.code.org. Participants will learn how to use the Scratch (absolutely no associated fees) online and offline resources to get students of any age five years and up coding in less than an hour. This will lead to an exploration of the "Hour of Code" initiative presented by www.code.org. Code.org also absolutely free, offers a variety of programming languages (Scratch, Blockly, JavaScript, Python) and group activities (Scratch, Google CS First, Tynker) to get students hooked on coding with a wide range of choices aligned to a plethora of interests: Art, Music, Robotics, Gaming, Storytelling, and more. If educators come away from this conversation with a strong notion of a quick way for teachers to introduce coding instruction in their school, at absolutely no cost beyond having computers with an Internet connection, then it will be a complete success.
As of June 2017 I'll have finished 16 years of teaching computers and being the Tech SPOC at P.S. 11 (02M011) in New York City. I am a strong believer in using technology to augment the curriculum work throughout the school. I teach out of a 34 iMac station computer lab and support the Pre-k thru 5th grade classrooms throughout the school. Before PS11 I taught 2 years as the technology coordinator in a private school in California and spent 10 year as a retail store manager in various Tower Record Stores across the country. I received my Bachelor of Arts degree in History / Education from Beloit College. I moved to Manhattan in 1992 where I earned my MSEd in Elementary Education from Bank Street College and then an MS in Instructional Technology from Touro College.