Julie Linden, Cindy Formas and Maria Kilgore

The team’s innovative teaching idea, “Every Child Can Code,” focuses on helping students develop coding skills at a young age. The program aims to improve children’s awareness of computer technologies and related career fields, and then give them the opportunity to learn, practice and master computer coding. To solidify their skills, students will work in teams to develop code that instructs a robot to perform a series of tasks or respond a certain way to a particular aspect of its environment. Linden and her team believe that early exposure to computer concepts and IT careers is particularly important for students in the impoverished school district where they teach, so they hope this project will enrich the learning environment and provide needed access to computer science education.