SDU University hosted an international workshop on programming and physical computing using the MicroBlocks platform, designed for future STEM educators. The event was organized as part of a collaboration between Artisan Education and the international MicroBlocks community.

The workshop featured distinguished speakers from Silicon Valley — Kathy Giori and Rekha Pai.

Kathy Giori is a technologist and entrepreneur with over 30 years of experience. She has held engineering and product roles at Mozilla, Arduino, and Qualcomm, and earned a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. She is currently leading global educational initiatives for the MicroBlocks project.

Rekha Pai is an investor and expert in technological innovation. She serves on the investment committee of Silicon Valley Social Venture Fund and mentors participants in the international TechWomen program.

MicroBlocks is a modern educational platform for programming microcontrollers and learning physical computing. It uses visual blocks similar to Scratch and enables “live programming,” allowing users to run code directly on devices and observe sensor data and results in real time. The project is developed by an international team of engineers and researchers, including Scratch co-developer John Maloney.

The hands-on part of the workshop was conducted using PiBody educational kits developed by Artisan Education. These kits support learning in programming, engineering, and robotics.

The workshop was held in a Train-the-Trainers format and aimed at enhancing the professional competencies of future STEM teachers.