Photos by Norton Gusky CC BY 4.0

Starting in December I worked with a team of educators including Darby Copeland from Parkway West Career and Technology Center (PWCTC), and Justin Aglio and Scott Millburn from the Montour School District, to develop two Design Challenges for schools in the PWCTC consortium.  Each Design Challenge tapped into a real world problem at the Energy Innovation Center (EIC) in Pittsburgh. Bob Meeder, the CEO for the EIC,  and Jessica Lee, the Outreach Coordinator, helped to define the challenges and a team from Penn State assisted the students in understanding the scope of each project.

In November I also joined the edcampPGH team for our fifth unconference event. Over 130 educators from K-12, out of school, higher education, and business came to the Montour High School for an energizing event organized by Justin Aglio.

I work with two startups  – Zulama and Birdbrain Technologies.  Tom Lauwers, the founder and Chief Scientist for Birdbrain, joined me for the final session of a course I developed for Carnegie Mellon’s University’s Osher program. The senior adults enthusiastically created their pet robot and then used a Scratch program to control the Hummingbird LEDs and motors. The Osher course for Lifelong Learners tapped into Emerging Educational Technologies such as: Computational Thinking, Game-based Learning, Virtual Reality, and Flipped Learning.

In April I’ll present with my colleague from the South Fayette School District, Aileen Owens, and Innovation Teacher, Don Wettrick,  at the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) Conference to talk about the white paper I’m helping to edit on “Students as Digital Creators.”