We'll be demonstrating our new CodeBot projects, along with the best way to teach Python programming and Physical Computing - CodeSpace!
See ya there!
https://conference.iste.org/2019/
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AND don't miss David Ewing's session: "Hands on Python Coding with CodeBots and micro:bits!"
Monday June 17, 2:30pm
https://weteachcssummit2019.sched.com/event/Om5f/hands-on-python-coding-with-codebots-and-microbits
Hosted by:
]]>This is a very exciting time for us here at Firia Labs. In our journey as an EdTech company we started out as “technologists with a heart for education”. Over the past two years we’ve learned SO much about the challenges teachers face on a day-to-day basis: classroom management, professional development, and constantly evolving standards just to name a few. From the start we’ve tried to stay very closely connected to our Teachers and Students – we want to make sure everything we create is serving our users’ needs. And in all our endeavors from developing resources like Teacher’s Manuals, Standards Alignment guidelines, pacing guides and rubrics, to online curriculum and tools, we’ve had the help of some amazingly talented teachers!
Now I have the pleasure of introducing one of the teachers with whom we’ve had a very close working relationship for some time, Amber Merrill. From our first months of beta testing the JumpStart Python curriculum to the first-ever CodeBot robotics teams, Amber has been a strong contributor to our efforts. Now we are honored to welcome her as part of our full-time Firia Labs team! Let me share a bit more about Amber’s background:
Amber received a Bachelor’s degree in education from Purdue University in 2003. She continued on to receive a Master’s degree while also working as a teacher and program specialist for Purdue’s Gifted Education Resource Institute. Her research interests included serving underrepresented gifted populations and maintaining girls’ interest in STEM in the middle grades. Moving to Madison Alabama in 2005, Amber worked as a gifted specialist and math teacher for Madison City Schools, while also serving as a math team coach and sponsor of an all-girls’ robotics team that won the Alabama tournament and competed at the World championship in Atlanta. Amber served on numerous math, technology, and instructional leadership teams and was awarded Teacher of the Year in 2010 for her school. In 2017, she received National Board status for mathematics and was invited to be a reviewer for newly developed exam items. In that same year she took on a new challenge, becoming a middle school Computer Science teacher for Athens City Schools. It was there that she became acquainted with the Firia Labs team, joining the first Beta cohort with CodeSpace and Jumpstart Python! Amber’s family shares in her love of STEM; her husband Garrick is a Computer Engineer for NASA, and her daughters Amelia, 8, and Lillian, 6, are frequent sounding boards for new ideas.
Please join us in welcoming Amber to the Firia Labs team. I think you will share our excitement about the experience, creativity, and skill she brings to our efforts, and the impact that will have on our mission going forward!
]]>We are excited to attend the Region I ACTE conference this year in Pittsburgh. We look forward to sharing our computer science tools with region I educators!
For more information, or to register online, click here!
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April 16-18
Many thanks to all the Region IV educators in Oklahoma City that chatted with us at this year's ACTE PACE conference. Great to see shared excitement about our new Robotics Curriculum, and teaching real Python Code to CTE students with our engaging hardware and software kits.
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Firia labs will be at the University of Alabama on April sixth, to support Athens Middle School as they compete using our new Codebot CB2 Rovers. This awesome event is open to students from all over the state, and we're excited to see all of the fun and innovative challenges these teams will tackle.
]]>Join us at the AMSTI Athens STEM competition on April 5 to learn more about CodeSpace, and check out our new product, CodeBot!
We'll be at the Wallace State Community College School of Nursing & Center for Science from 9:00am -1:00pm, showing of our new hardware and answering all of your questions about our computer science education tools.
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The Hackathon will be held at Samford University, Brock School of Business and there will be up to 20 teams competing.
To help teams prepare for the competition, Firia Labs is teaching a free Python Workshop on January 5th.
For the Hackathon itself, Firia Labs is providing two of their Jump Start kits (20 micro:bits total) to be used during the competition. At the end of the contest, these kits will be awarded to the teachers of the top two teams.
Good luck to all Hackathon participants!
]]>The workshop will be held at the Innovation Depot, Inc. from 12-3pm.
Register as soon as possible because space is limited! Open to all students 8th-12th grade, regardless of school, and you do not have to bring a laptop to participate. Just be sure to select whether you are bringing your own device on your registration ticket (eventbrite link below).
"We wanted to help students get ready for the upcoming TEEN TECH BHAM HACKATHON coming up on January 18th-19th" said Firia Labs President Geri Ewing.
Good luck to all Workshop participants!
]]>While at #VISIONCTE18 we @FiriaLabs enjoyed & appreciated the convos around offering #python to classrooms around the country through #CodeSpace Looking forward to seeing many more Ss w/ opportunity to #graduatefromblocks & be empowered w/ an intro to a marketable skill. #CTE pic.twitter.com/S53qbGde2y
— Firia Labs (@FiriaLabs) November 30, 2018
This conference proved to be a productive time for both educators and Firia Labs. While teachers, admins, and other educators learned that taking Python to their classrooms no longer needed to be scary, we learned of some needs that we as a vendor can fulfill that will make this relationship even more rich for students and educators alike. Looking forward to continuing the momentum in computer science & STEM with all of the CTE providers!
Congratulations to Jemeil, the winner of our Explorer Kit give-away, and a big THANKS to the volunteer who helped us with the actual drawing.
Education Administrator from Sweet Home Alabama drawing for the winner of @FiriaLabs Explorer kit at #VisionCTE18. #CSforALL #CsforAl #graduatefromblocks @AlabamaDeptofEd #python @jgrayatua pic.twitter.com/ssOPElQeLl
— Firia Labs (@FiriaLabs) November 30, 2018
For more information about this conference, please visit http://www.careertechvision.com
For more information about our kits, including the Firia Labs Explorer, please visit https://www.firialabs.com/collections/kits
]]>One of @FiriaLabs best fans in MN. We may not be able to pull him away from #CodeSpace today during Family day at #NAGC18. #mncodes #MNGifted pic.twitter.com/PG1n9MIIzg
— Firia Labs (@FiriaLabs) November 17, 2018
Girl power during Family day at #NAGC18. #girlscancode #GirlCode #CodeSpace #graduatefromblocks #python @FiriaLabs pic.twitter.com/fGYu5Y2QXG
— Firia Labs (@FiriaLabs) November 17, 2018
Woohoo! We found her! Congrats Sonya from Atlanta for winning the drawing for our Explorer kit! Happy #coding in #python with @CodeSpace! #graduatefromblocks #NAGC18 pic.twitter.com/1WbnTn8doa
— Firia Labs (@FiriaLabs) November 17, 2018
We were also delighted at the number of Media Specialists and STEM-focused teachers and Administrators ready to level-up to text based coding!
Diggin the girl power today! No offense intended to the gentlemen. #CodeSpace #python #graduatefromblocks #coding #edtech #GaETC18 #physicalcomputing #CSforAll pic.twitter.com/tknDntni0q
— Firia Labs (@FiriaLabs) November 7, 2018
And MORE girls! Woot! #CodeSpace #python #graduatefromblocks #CSforAll #GaETC18 #edtech pic.twitter.com/ZhNMi2z9pw
— Firia Labs (@FiriaLabs) November 7, 2018
As you can see from our Twitter feed, the Georgia Girl Power was in full effect! Way to go ladies!
We also want to say a big CONGRATULATIONS to Stacy, the winner of our Explorer Kit give-away.
For more information about GaETC, please visit https://www.gaetc.org/consortium
For more information about this conference, please visit https://www.gaetc.org/
For more information about our kits, including the Firia Labs Explorer, please visit https://www.firialabs.com/collections/kits
Firia Labs is excited to have contributed a CodeSpace-based activity for the 2018 "Hour of CodeTM" event taking place world-wide on December 3 through 9, 2018.
"We felt it was important to have additional activities that focused on text-based coding in Python included in the set of Activities," said Firia Labs President Geri Ewing.
Good luck to all "Hour of CodeTM" participants!
]]>Staying busy at #AMLE sharing #CodeSpace with middle level educators. Booth 116. #graduatefromblocks to #python Our highly scaffolded #coding product takes away the fear! pic.twitter.com/mkK83z03vi
— Firia Labs (@FiriaLabs) October 25, 2018For more information about AMLE, please visit http://www.amle.org
For more information about this conference, please visit http://www.amle.org/annual/Home/tabid/244/Default.aspx
For more information about Firia Labs, please visit https://www.firialabs.com
Thanks again for coming out and CODING with us!
]]>Have I mentioned spunky teachers at #AAGC? Learning #python with #CodeSpace from @FiriaLabs pic.twitter.com/zogrN15hvs
— Firia Labs (@FiriaLabs) October 19, 2018
Lots of fun learning to write #Python code for #micro:bit in #CodeSpace; Excited about getting CS students started! Thank you Geri and David! @ecsk12_ehs @EufaulaCS #CS4AL @AlabamaCsta #expectmore18 pic.twitter.com/F6ewHPreSE
— Lee Calton (@lee_calton) October 7, 2018
@CSforAllTchrs @bobby_oommen Great resource here in @FiriaLabs check them out!! #DLCS4AL #cs4alabama @AlabamaCsta https://t.co/viYuZi8VKY
— Vinny Chiaramonte (@VinnyCSed) October 7, 2018
Today marks the launch of US EdTech startup Firia Labs’ CodeSpace™ web platform, an innovative development and learning environment for coding with maker hardware. Aimed at schools, STEM programs, MakerSpaces, and individuals seeking better tools for text-based coding, CodeSpace offers a major advance in ease-of-use while leveraging powerful features normally found only in professional software development tools. The web-based product integrates a software development environment with a self-paced step-by-step curriculum that teaches coding in the python programming language through a progression of projects using the BBC micro:bit, a versatile maker-oriented computing device designed for teaching coding.
CodeSpace’s free platform gives all micro:bit users a powerful new tool for text-based coding. Current micro:bit users can simply login at https://make.firialabs.com, and immediately start learning python as they explore new projects. Advanced features and more advanced coding curriculum can be enabled by upgrading to the Full version of CodeSpace.
“For the past 3 months we have been conducting an extensive Beta program with many classrooms across the US.” said Geri Ewing, CEO of Firia Labs. “It has been amazing to watch teachers with no prior coding experience become quickly confident and successful in guiding students through the curriculum. We learned a lot and made countless improvements to the product during Beta, but our core vision held true: high engagement value of maker hardware, the value of tight integration of curriculum with the development environment, and the key capability to interactively execute and debug the code. We’re excited about where we can take the technology next, but even here at the outset, I think with CodeSpace and the micro:bit we’ve created the best maker-coding experience on the market today.”
CodeSpace Free platform:
Additional features available in CodeSpace Full version:
Along with the CodeSpace platform, Firia Labs is also offering complete coding kits:
The software that powers Firia Labs products is the culmination of an intensive R&D effort by their Huntsville, Alabama based engineering team. The R&D effort was partially funded by an SBIR award from the National Science Foundation (www.nsf.gov).
All products mentioned above are available at: https://firialabs.com
]]>We’ll be posting pictures and comments during the Pilot phase in January and February 2018, leading up to our much-anticipated launch of the JumpStart kit in March.
]]>“Text based coding can be very intimidating to both students and teachers.” Said Geri Ewing, CEO of CodeBot Labs. “Teachers want to step up to real code, and by 5th grade it’s getting hard to keep kids engaged with block-based programs and toys. What we’re doing differently is teaching real-world text based code, one step at a time, by building projects with actual maker hardware. The magic is a combination of tailored project-based curriculum and custom-built software that lets our CodeSpace website guide the learning experience.”
The software that powers CodeBot Labs products is the culmination of an intensive R&D effort by their Huntsville, Alabama based engineering team. A grant from the Economic Development Partnership of Alabama (www.edpa.org) and an SBIR award from the National Science Foundation (www.nsf.gov) are helping propel this research forward.
The “Start Coding!” kits are in pilot testing at selected schools in early 2018, and will be available for purchase at http://codebotlabs.com in March.
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