Code.org Professional Learning

Take a peek at the CS teacher training programs that I worked so hard to start up and expand! 

Our teacher recruitment efforts included:

• reaching out to district administrators

• school/classroom tours: taking administrators to model schools/classrooms

• working with the Nebraska Department of Education

• media campaigns

• information webinars

• booth presentations

• conference presentations

• advertisement events (e.g., luncheons)

• word of mouth  

A good website is a must-have to run professional learning programs effectively and efficiently. I designed, developed, and maintained the entire program sites. The university web development platform required the knowledge of the Drupal-based web framework, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. I also used PHP for effective layout design. 

Since our program launch, we have trained over 630 teachers from more than 270 schools across Nebraska.

Code.org - the international nonprofit organization - funded our programs, paid to train me, and provided us with all the materials, resources, and support for me to succeed as the Nebraska Regional Partner Program Manager. 

• Biannual week-long regional partner summits

• Webinars for follow-up training

• CSEdCon participation

• Networking with the regional partner program managers from other states, with administrators, and with international partners

• Code.org Regional Manager supporting our regional needs

• Training and ongoing support by Code.org for our regional facilitators (trainers)

• Full CS curricula, daily lesson plans, course materials, and learning platforms and tools all ready to go

• Funding and resources from Code.org to host community building and Hour of Code events

• Annual program evaluation and funding requests

• Lots of fun and other supports from Code.org

Each year, I organized 2 or 3 five-day summer workshops and 10 or more one-day in-person workshops (or 20+ virtual workshops). As the program manager, I was responsible for all of the planning, budgeting, recruiting, communications, purchasing, preparations, reservations, and post-workshop tasks (e.g., payment requests). 

When we started, we already had partnership with Code.org and Lincoln Public Schools. Over the years, we have gained quite a few supporters and expanded our CSEd network and partnership. 

I planned and organized events and activities to promote community outreach and community building for CS education. Some of the events and activities included: 

• networking luncheons

• t-shirt design contest

• networking happy hours

• prizes at conference presentations

I chose Twitter as our main social media platform as it had the most users among our target audience. I needed at least 1,000 followers for our marketing purposes, including the past, current, and future PD participants, partners, administrators, etc. I didn't get there. I'm hoping that my successors will do better. 

I was responsible for creating the yearly budget and ensuring the maximum funding from Code.org by strategically recruiting teachers and coordinating the entire program implementation throughout the year.  The process involved identifying and categorizing the Nebraska schools into different scholarship tiers, recruiting based on the tiers, surveying the participants' program participation and implementation plans, working with the school administrators, and more. 

I served on the planning committee for the annual Lincoln Hour of Code & Tech Fair. In addition to setting up my own booth for our Code.org professional learning programs, I also:

• made arrangements for Hour of Code swag and tutorial completion certificates

• filmed and live-streamed the event

• coordinated a raffle and prize distributions

• assisted with Hour of Code tutorials

• made event signs and website 

• planned, designed, developed, and ran the virtual HoC website mostly on my own during the pandemic