Sunrise and a New Semester

Sunrise signals a new day and new opportunities. I’m taking on a new challenge over the next six months. In some ways, I will be changing my focus from developing Jupyter tools to sharing how to use these Jupyter tools as well as others, like nteract, CircuitPython, mu, EduBlocks and p5.js, to foster learning.

For as long as I can remember, I have been passionate about using technology to help others learn and to offer access to inspiring educational resources. It’s a profound gift to be a small part of someone’s joy and excitement about learning something new. The satisfaction of being told that you have helped someone learn something new that they weren’t confident that they could do gives meaning to why technology matters most to me.

As I watch the sunrise, or more accurately the yellow tone in the sky increase, I’m looking forward to starting a new semester or chapter in my technology journey. Today, I’ll be spending my second day moving into a creative workspace and begin to focus full-time on empowering learning and improving interactive, life-long education.

I’m not leaving the Jupyter or Python world. I’m devoted to improving access for all to quality educational materials. I’ll be using a number of tools, such as Jupyter notebooks, Python, JupyterHub, Binder, nteract, p5.js, CircuitPython, mu, and EduBlocks, to create and deliver educational materials and services.

I’m very excited to build some early side projects, such as Crackers the Coding Friend using CircuitPython and Adafruit’s open hardware CircuitPlayground and Crickt. It’s planned to be a whimsical robot friend, using open hardware and software, to help new developers with rubber duck debugging.

I’ll also be building upon a workshop that I gave to middle school and high school students at Cal Poly SLO this summer as part of the EPIC program. The workshop focused on interactivity in computer science, and how interactivity improves the learning experience and exploration of software code.

For the next few weeks, I’ll be getting ready for JupyterCon and sharing with you my vision for Jupyter in Education and the work which we have been doing this past year at Project Jupyter.

Thanks for reading this post. I’m looking forward to sharing more in a future post.

P.S. Thanks to the wonderful friends and family who encourage me to follow my dreams and to make an impact on others. Without your gentle encouragement and seeing something in me which I don’t always see in myself I would not have the courage to build my dreams. Hugs.

Photo credit: pt at Adafruit