Ryan grew up in the small town of Hudson, MA and earned his B.A. in Political Science from the University of Vermont. After completing his degree, Ryan got his Teach English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) Certification and moved to Santiago, Chile where he taught English for two years and gained Spanish fluency. While in Chile, Ryan volunteered as an English-language workshop facilitator for underserved elementary school students. His experiences in non-profit and education abroad have contributed to his passion for intercultural education. He left Chile in 2014 and moved to New York City to work for Global Kids, Inc. as an Online Leadership Program Associate. Since then, Ryan has become deeply involved in digital media learning, designing curricula and creating instructional materials related to game design, podcast and radio story production, and media literacy. He is passionate about creating interactive learning experiences for kids and adults and lending pedagogical support to educators who want to integrate digital media and technology into their lessons. Outside of his professional life, Ryan enjoys playing guitar and spending time outdoors.

This interactive workshop will provide participants with an introduction on how to design a video game using Scratch and explore how game design helps to promote youth self-expression, support children learn more deeply about issues and stories that interest them, and develop important problem-solving and computational thinking skills along the way. Participants will complete a brainstorming activity that can be applied to a variety of lessons and educational contexts. Next, they will use their ideas from the brainstorm to create a game on Scratch, using basic coding techniques. This workshop will be useful to educators with ANY LEVEL of programming experience and expertise in ANY SUBJECT, even if the educator has never done any coding before. Participants will have the opportunity to play each other’s games and share them on Scratch’s free open-source platform.