Kids & Devs: Teaching Tech to Both

Track: Agile
Skill Level: Beginner
Room: Room A406-407
Time Slot: Tue 2/16, 4:00 PM
Tags: training , education
Abstract

When you teach technical topics, each audience poses its own set of challenges. What challenges do children share with professional developers? What challenges are unique to each group? How can teaching kids make you better at teaching professionals?

After running nearly 100 programming education events for kids and being on both sides of developer education and documentation for years, Greg Bulmash is sharing his insights on teaching tech. What should you know about working with kids? What should you know about working with devs? What are the advantages and common gotchas of both groups and how do you leverage those to do better when delivering technical content/training?

Greg Bulmash

Greg Bulmash once wrote a joke that went so viral it became an urban legend, and it still circulates nearly 20 years later. He started in tech by publishing jokes and humorous essays to his own web site, eventually rising to become Senior Editor of the Internet Movie Database (IMDb.com). In 2005, he dusted off his BASIC programming skills from the 80s, taught himself some of the programming languages that power the web, and pivoted into a career writing code and communicating with developer audiences. He currently works as a Technical Evangelist for Login with Amazon and in his spare time runs Seattle CoderDojo, a volunteer group where local tech professionals help kids learn computer programming.

He’s spoken at OSCON, CascadiaJS, DevNexus, Apps World North America, and multiple meetups about web development, programming, and teaching kids how to code.