Once upon a time, I was a high school student who took a course in Visual Basic, and loved coding. Unfortunately, the only way for me to take the next level of the course was as an independent study, using a classroom that was also occupied by a very funny teacher instructing a trigonometry class. When I couldn`t get anything accomplished in that environment, I dropped the course and changed my entire trajectory to become an elementary school teacher. Throughout my career as a teacher, I have dabbled in coding: teaching robotics camps using Lego robots, participating in Charlotte Teachers Institute focusing on artificial intelligence, encouraging my students to code using Code.org and Scratch in those times when they have finished their work early, and taking professional development courses on how to use Google Apps Scripts to automate repetitive tasks. As part of a PhD program in Curriculum Instruction and the Science of Learning, the statistics courses I`ve taken have required me to learn the basics of R and SPSS for data analysis and data visualization, and those courses both frustrated and excited me. I`ve always enjoyed using data to inform my teaching, but these tools and skills brought that enjoyment to a whole new level. As a result, I`m working to learn Python and expand my knowledge of R.
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