I am an educator, programmer, and technologist. I make digital literacy and computer science topics accessible to all students through engaging, interactive activities and cross-curricular integrations. I am especially interested in centering ethics and impacts of technology in this work.
May 2020 – present
Work with research team to develop and refine microworld programming environments that teach elementary students mathematics through programming
Develop customizations to Snap! programming language to simplify user interface in microworlds.
Work with international Snap! development team to incorporate microworld customizations into the main Snap! language.
August 2018 – present
Collaborate with classroom teachers and instructional coaches to design and co-teach lessons that integrate digital literacy and computer science.
Coach educators to meaningfully and ethically integrate technology and digital literacy and computer science content into their practice.
Provide digital literacy and computer science professional development to other educators at the school, district, regional, and national level.
A web app that simulates "learning" a language like a large language model. After a few minutes of testing, users can construct plausible "sentences". Yet even with unlimited time and example sentences, they will never gain the context to understand what their sentences mean.
A customizable web app and lesson where students "investigate" fictional digital footprints attributed to their teachers to discover who has been spamming the school with anonymous emails. In the process, they learn about the traces they leave behind when they send emails, search the web, and use Google Drive.
A web app and accompanying lesson that demonstrates ways apps collect data without user notice or consent. After experiencing surprising, undetectable data collection, students learn how these techniques work and ways they're used in real life. Can be followed up with subsequent lessons where students think about and discuss the impact of such data collection.
October 2024
Presentation by Zak Kolar
Also presented at:
October 2024
Interactive demonstration by Zak Kolar and Judy Vizard
July 2023
Presentation by Zak Kolar
October 2022
Presentation by Zak Kolar
August 2014 – May 2018
Summa cum laude with highest honors
Phi Beta Kappa