It was a fantastic program that demonstrated to me how to teach Scratch. The coding workshop at our school and Tynker workshop have inspired me to start up a coding club and include Scratch and Tynker coding into the technology units done at our school. I tried teaching Scratch last year and felt like I did a really bad job so this has given me the confidence to include it again in a meaningful way for the students.

Emily de la Pena has been a key contributor to the development and implementation of the Young Innovator Program at Oakleigh State School. This is a program designed to support our students to be creative and innovative in their thinking and to apply this to the use of technology and entrepreneurship. She has also given freely and willingly of her time to provide insights to audiences. of both adults and students, at a number of events including Oakleigh’s QLD Women’s Week - a week in which we promoted the women in our community in roles of leadership and STEM. She is passionate about providing advice relating to her own experiences as a businesswoman and entrepreneur and personally I have always been impressed by her honesty, commitment to this cause, her passion and energy and to the perceptive insights she shares openly with her young learners.

The Queensland College of Teachers (QCT) registers teachers for Queensland schools and accredits the state’s preservice teacher education programs. The QCT also provides professional development opportunities for Queensland teachers in the form of face to face workshops and web conferences. On occasion the QCT invites guests to facilitate our web conferences. Emily has been a guest facilitator supporting QLD teachers to develop further understandings in the use of Scratch, a visual programming tool. Emily's sessions are always well received and she has given her time freely and on a voluntary process. The feedback received is always very positive and participants find Emily's approach very easy to follow and understand. Emily has also worked in schools supporting students and teachers to develop skills and understandings in coding and programming. On a personal note, I have found Emily to be a dedicated and professional young woman.

Emily and her team of enthusiastic staff have worked closely with Bulimba State School’s P&C and teachers to introduce Coding to Yr 4, 5 and 6 students in after school workshops for the past 18 months. Emily worked closely with us to tailor a 6wk course that introduced students to coding with Scratch and utilised Makey Makey’s so they learnt how to integrate hardware and software. The feedback from parents, children and teachers was always very positive, and we now offer an Intermediate course as well, where the students work in teams to solve a problem using coding and hardware. Emily is an amazing role model for the children as a business owner, entrepreneur, public speaker and female in technology. She is very proactive, easy to work with, professional and full of new ideas which results in fun learning experiences for all students no matter what their capability is. The introduction of coding at Bulimba in 2015 triggered a full STEAM program of extra-curriculum activities in 2017 which continues to expand and included a STEAM Expo in May 2017 where 240+ students participated in workshops at school on a Sunday. Coding Kids were one of the vendors who helped make this day a huge success within the local Bulimba Community.

Thank you so much for yesterday’s workshop and the beautiful photo’s. What a fantastic day – everyone thought it was really valuable! We loved how the workshop was tailored to suit our needs and the robotics technology we have. The step by step teaching approach and seeing in person how you would do this for the kid’s workshops will be very helpful with delivering our own workshops. I also think it is wonderful that we have access to your course resources and program plans. I have called SLQ today and let them know how valuable the day was for us and they said they would be putting another article promoting you in their next e-newsletter. Thank you again!