Our newsletters highlight a variety of people, organizations, and resources that are doing work to broaden participation and expand equitable and engaging computer science and STEM opportunities. We are honored to work in this space along with so many talented and passionate individuals and want to help bring attention to their work.
This Week’s Spotlight: Mondo Davison
Mondo Davison is on a mission to inject innovation and creativity into the education system through Schoolz, an educational platform he and his team released earlier this year. As a former educator, he saw firsthand, the lack of culturally relevant content in the classroom needed to engage students of color.
Mondo started his career in education at Obama Elementary in St. Paul. He is known as the “The Black Tech Guy” and proudly wears t-shirts and hoodies with those words across his chest. His interest in technology was sparked when watching a show where Apple opened up app development to the broader community to build cool things for what we now know as the App Store. After seeing that, Mondo felt that he could solve problems in education using technology. “If I could build something amazing in tech, maybe some young Black boys will see that and be inspired to do the same.”
That’s where the idea of Schoolz comes in. Schoolz is a digital library of culturally relevant content designed to help educators better engage their students by partnering with BIPOC artists and educators. “The Twin Cities is uniquely suited to get the Latinx perspective, or the Black, or Asian perspectives because there is a lot of culture embedded deep in our communities. You just have to go out and get it,” Davison said. He believes that injecting fresh new ideas and content from local musicians, artists, designers, and technologists, with experienced educators building a curriculum around that content, would make a platform like Schoolz amazing for students.
“I feel like we have the opportunity to reinvent how education looks for everyone. We just have to lean into it and be willing to take some risks,” said Davison.
Schoolz will begin releasing free weekly content at the end of October. You can sign up by visiting their website. And Red Bull Basement Launchpad featured Schoolz in their Heartland Region event.
This Week's Project Inspiration Theme: Computer Learning Month
October Computer Learning Month!
The computer is such an integral part of our lives (especially now through online learning) and with this organization. This month we want to celebrate computer learning and the power that coding opportunities have on youth. Try following along with this App Inventor tutorial and create a fun mobile game in celebration of Computer Learning Month. Remember, this is just a suggestion; use your creative genius to create a personalized project!
We hope you create a CS project in honor of Computer Learning Month! If you do, please share it with us.
Share Your CS to Go Projects!
How to Share: We invite CS to Go with Code Savvy participants to consider sharing your projects publicly with the Code Savvy and greater #MNCodes community via video with Flipgrid. We can’t wait to see what you create! Please be sure to follow online safety guidelines and get adult permission before sharing. You can find our Privacy Policy here.