In November of 2018, I had a blog article published on Tynker's blog talking about the importance of teaching coding. It highlights the amazing school I am fortunate to work at. Tynker is an amazing resource available to teachers to teach coding. A link to the article is provided below. 

Hello St. Albans Friends and Families, 
This past week Mrs. Gast and I traveled to the University of Wyoming for an intensive training in Arduinos and Raspberry Pis! The training called the, Engineering Summer Program for Teachers, was amazing! We spent the entire week working on, building and coding circuits. In addition, we learned about how other teachers have integrated this program in their classrooms. We talked about how to use the entire Engineering Design Process, in classes when working on projects.
Having students build and code hardware, is an amazing hands on way to teach students how to code. There are many projects that I will be introducing to students this year. One example, is students can create a weather station that will collect data over time. Mrs. Gast will also be bringing some new projects to Coding Club this year. 
The University gave us Raspberry Pis, Arduinos, and a variety of sensors to use in class. We will have enough for a full class to be able to work in pairs! I was humbled by their extreme generosity! I have posted some photos from our training below. 

Hello All, 
I hope summer is going great for everyone! I am starting this website to make communication just a little easier. This summer, I am restructuring all of my classes. I believe in a growth mindset. I am excited to take what I learned last year teaching, and to make it even better for this school year. Last year, St. Albans introduced a spiraling technology curriculum at the same time I started. Students created some really fantastic projects and I am happy to continue that this upcoming year as well. 
Also, I am really excited because I have the wonderful opportunity to travel to the University of Wyoming this summer, for a week long, intensive, professional development on teaching physical computing. I am really excited for this training and the opportunity to bring some cool projects back to the classroom for this up coming school year. 

-Mrs. Gern