Hi Guest,
We are grateful for a lot this year as we enter the holiday season. Most especially for our team’s ability to move heaven and earth to make magic for our teachers and our students. Special shoutout to Jitendra and Lokendra (our two FABULOUS developers) who are doing everything they can to make sure we have
“The Whole New MAD-learn” ready for teachers by the end of this year.
We can’t wait to show you what’s coming soon…
Alefiya Master
Founder & CEO
We are so excited to have three cool activities added to code.org‘s Hour of Code program! Be sure to search for and check out “App Wars!”, “Picture This! HTML Decoded”, and “Deconstructing Code in a Flash” here. Hour of Code is available year-round, but every year in December your class can join millions of students around the world celebrating Computer Science Education Week with the Hour of Code. Registration for the annual celebration starts each year in October. One-hour tutorials in over 45 languages. No experience is needed, and Hour of Code activities are available for free year-round. We hope you can enjoy these new MAD-learn #HourofCode activities with your students this year!
It has been a busy conference season for MAD-learn and its partners. We attended the CSforALL Summit in Memphis, the GA STEM/ STEAM Forum in Athens, the GaETC conference in Atlanta, and a DeKalb County STEM Leaders meeting (right photo). Our own CEO and road warrior, Alefiya Master (left photo), moderated sessions at the CSforALL Summit in Memphis last month. This year’s theme for the CSforALL Summit was Game Changers in CS. Alexandra and Alefiya (along with our partners at Teq) presented a FULL standing-room-only APPy Hour session at the GA STEM/STEAM forum. Two MAD-experts from Dekalb County (Lawanda Sanford and Heather Miller, center photo) presented a session on using app development across the curriculum at GaETC.
The season will end with Alefiya, Gregg and Alexandra all presenting at NYSCATE (The New York State Association for Computers and Technologies in Education Conference) in Rochester, NY later this month. Learn about what we will be up to at NYSCATE here.
MAD-learn is a proud member and partner of CSforALL. This year, we have made five commitments that we are so proud and honored to announce.
MAD-learn’s commitments include:
- Hosting three virtual “APPstravaganzas” to highlight student and teacher work in CS across the nation with a goal of introducing 500 teachers to new ideas
- Providing professional development and teacher certification to help 200 teachers bring App Development into any classroom nationwide
- Releasing a new product that is the first-ever technology-integrated, six-step design thinking process into their app development tool, serving 50 schools nationwide
- Providing $10,000 in grants to support five teachers anywhere in the US with CS and STEM integration in their classrooms
- Providing virtual internship opportunities to 25 students nationwide to help these students experience what it is like to work with a global EdTech company.
CSforALL commitments are new, specific, and measurable actions aimed at advancing the goal of rigorous and inclusive computer science education for all U.S. youth and designed to grow support and momentum for a sustainable K-12 computer science education system in and out of school.
Maria Lazaro graduated from Florida State University and has been teaching for over 10 years. In 2019, she moved to Georgia and is currently in her 4th year at East Cobb Middle School teaching Family and Consumer Science. Prior to becoming a teacher, she was a social worker, working with teenagers aging out of foster care and teaching them the skills needed to be successful in their everyday life.
Maria shared her interest in MAD-learn with us. “If there is a word that could describe who I am, I would have to say CREATIVE. It is the theme that I carry throughout my classroom, from my class rules to our classroom culture. So, when I learned about MAD-learn, I knew it was an opportunity to get my students excited about learning something new, as well as stretch their imaginations.”
Students were asked to work in groups of four to develop a restaurant. A member from each team was hired as the Marketing manager and was tasked with using MAD-learn to create an app for their restaurant. As projects came due, the Marketing Manager from each group would share their app with the class. MAD-learn helped take a project-based lesson to a new level and provided students with a fun and creative hands-on experience in building a usable app! Maria also shared her appreciation for the support she has received. “Alefiya and Alexandra were both amazing to work with. They came and introduced the program and then Alexandra came several more times to help support the students. Just a great experience all the way around!”
We want to thank schools that have either renewed their partnerships with MAD-learn or are just joining our MAD-family. We are so happy to know we will be continuing our work to help students at:
- Broadview Thompson K-8 School (WA)
- Linden Public Schools (NJ)
- Palm Beach County Schools (FL)
- Millennium Art Academy (NY)
…checking out the Whole New MAD-learn, coming soon!!! Want to learn more about it and be on the list to get early access in the new year? Email us today: team@mad-learn.com
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