Congratulations to Winners of First Teacher Excellence Awards

Thank you to Amazon Future Engineer and Mobile CSP for sponsoring this award:

In conjunction with the 2022 MIT App Inventor Summer Appathon, the App Inventor Foundation hosted the first Teacher Excellence Awards to recognize outstanding teachers who have promoted creativity, technological empowerment, and computational action through App Inventor. This is the first year that the App Inventor Foundation is giving out this award. After a selection process and a series of interviews, we are incredibly excited to be honoring 10 winners from 7 different countries! Our winners are listed in the gallery below. We will be publishing feature news stories on our winning teachers in the coming weeks.

Christiane A. Gresse von Wangenheim

From: Florianópolis, Santa Catarina, Brazil

Christiane has been teaching for 22 years, and has taught App Inventor for the past 7 years.

“The way we teach is changing, and we have to accept more help from the students themselves. App Inventor accompanies active learning, because you just can try something out—And if it doesn’t work, you can troubleshoot the problem quickly.”

Yu Meng

From: Plano, Texas, United States of America

Yu has been teaching for 8 years, and has taught App Inventor for the past 3 years.

“I’ve been a data scientist in industry for over 25 years… and started teaching App Inventor to the students in my community during COVID when everyone was stuck at home. It is really important to inspire a student to want to build something. If you do, they will want to construct apps for the real world and learn programming faster.”

Congjun Jin

From: Beijing, China

Ms. Jin has been teaching for 17 years, and has taught App Inventor for the past 7 years.

“It’s easy for students to be discouraged when the barrier to entry is too high, and language is a big barrier for young students. One great thing about App Inventor is that it offers a Chinese language interface. Logical thinking is strengthened when using it, and once logical thinking is strengthened, you can learn any computer language more easily.

Getting hands-on is key. I want to see students solving problems in their lives. I encourage students to decide what they want to do and I ask them to observe what needs solving through technology.”

Azhar Az (Azzy)

From: Singapore

Azzy has been teaching for 6 years, and has taught App Inventor for the past 5 years.

“Not only do I want students to do well academically, but I also want them to be able to go through social-emotional learning in their entire journey of education. My favorite pedagogy is perseverance not perfection. I don’t expect you to come into class and get everything right. I just want you to keep working at it, and everything you get wrong will be a learning point for you.

Perseverance creates resilience. In resilience, you are able to last through the toughest times. Especially during the period of COVID, that helps students become more understanding and more mentally prepared as well.”

Goh Kok Ming

From: Taiping, Perak, Malaysia

Goh has been teaching for 7 years, and has taught App Inventor for the past 6 years.

“My school is a rural area school with few resources, and we face a lot of challenges. My students come from low economic and low academic achievement backgrounds and are from different races and speak different languages. I am especially concerned for the digital divide between rural and city schools. We do not have facilities and chances to learn digital tools, but I feel that the students cannot be left behind.

App Inventor is one of my tools to help them polish their potential. It unleashes their creativity and gives them technological empowerment so they can learn CS in a more meaningful way to solve their daily problems. I find it is more authentic for them to channel their energy into building an app to help themselves.”

Sushil Lamba

From: Shanghai, China

Sushil has been teaching for 6 years, and has taught App Inventor for the past 4.5 years.

“I used to work on AAA games and studios [across Asia]. When I moved to Shanghai, I started teaching students part-time and found that I quite liked inspiring younger kids. My approach to teaching is very game-based. Kids love games, and through my process, they are able to learn a 21st century skillset at the same time as learning how to code”

Anant Bhaskar Garg

From: Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India

Anant has been teaching for 23 years, and has taught App Inventor for the past 4 years.

“I have taught App Inventor through the Technovation Girls Challenge for the past 4 years and I’m interested in teaching to help educate and develop the capabilities of others.

Through the Technovation Girls program, our main purpose is to build capability and awareness around students and community members related to sustainable development, climate action, and social issues.”

Jason Koh

From: Subang Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia

Jason has been teaching for 7 years, and has taught App Inventor for the past 4 years.

“We are at the stage where not everyone appreciates the importance of ICT in the world. My approach is to understand what students are interested in, what their objectives and ambitions are, and then make them realize how all fields use ICT, whether it’s medicine or engineering. ICT skills are so important for their future, and I hope that my students are able to have a positive learning experience, a good struggle, and a sense of accomplishment everyday.”

Priyanka Srivastava

From: New Delhi, Delhi, India

Priyanka has been teaching for 7 years, and has taught App Inventor for the past 6 years.

“I created my own curriculum around computational thinking using MIT App Inventor for students here as young as 7 years old. Our philosophy is no spoon feeding, we want students to get into problem-solving with MIT App Inventor. When they are able to do it by themselves, they get more empowered and gain more confidence. Then, the degree to which they are able to get more and more done is what takes them a long way forward. We want them to get deep into the problem-solving with us here to guide them.

What are the problems they can tackle and what is an app they can create?"

Rodrigo Alonso Ospina Giraldo

From: Medellín, Antioquia, Colombia

Rodrigo has been teaching for 22 years, and has taught App Inventor for the past 2 years.

“If you transform a student’s life then you transform a family’s life. I tend to reach out to parents to get them to sign up for my courses and invite their kids to join. That way, the kids can get a leg up in this digital world full of opportunities, especially those from the poorer public schools.”