Coding Education

Maren Vernon

As an instructor, she did not disappoint. Maren is the consummate team player, reliable and extremely organized, and always ready to show up and get the job done. She was a fantastic communicator with students and coworkers alike, even when navigating different time zones and her outside of Skillcrush work and life responsibilities. Most importantly, Maren excelled at translating complex ideas into digestible instructions, while being incredibly supportive and encouraging to students.

Maren's talent for creating unique, innovative, yet relatable learning resources is only at the first layer of her talent....While working with Maren, she has demonstrated that she is a very disciplined and inquisitive team member who has led projects that have benefitted thousands of children around the world....I have worked remotely with Maren for three years, and she has continued to bring great professionalism, postivity, and a true creative spirit to our virtual team, adding to a healthy team culture and eagerness to collaborate. Thank you, Maren for your excellence!

I’M NOW A LEARNING RESOURCE DESIGNER FOR THE SCRATCH FOUNDATION!
Follow along on my social media accounts, blog, and professional Scratch profiles (@algorithmar and @scratchlycaterton) to see some of the current coding education work I’m doing.

I love helping others discover the joy of coding, and I’m driven to help the next class of tech workers be more inclusive and representative of diverse backgrounds and experiences, so tech can benefit everyone. I was privileged to teach adult students about HTML, CSS, and WordPress during my time with the Skillcrush team. Then, when I was preparing to teach my kids to code, I found a similar community feeling, open source energy, and creative inspiration in Scratch that I found in WordPress.

I first joined the moderation and community engagement teams at the Scratch Foundation while volunteering my personal time to create and bring coding lessons to elementary students in my local community. When the pandemic forced our schools to transition to virtual learning experiences, I created the videos shared below to help educators I knew looking for coding resources to engage their students.

In 2023, I was privileged to move into a dream role and become a Learning Resource Designer for the Scratch Foundation. I’ve documented my work in a number of blog posts and included links to some of the additional resources I’ve created on behalf of the Scratch Foundation. I hope you’ll continue to follow my work, experiment and tinker with me, and provide constructive feedback as I produce more videos, guides, workshops, and projects!

Coding Videos