Here’s a list of some of our favorite projects from 2024 - in order of how proud we are of them. Because anyone can do chronological order, but only we can tell you what we had the most fun doing.
New Studio
In June, CodeJoy officially moved out of our first home in Matt's garage into an historic school building in West Homestead, Pennsylvania. The move marks a significant expansion for the company, with the new location offering five classroom spaces. We’ve renovated these classrooms into a new, larger CodeJoy studio, a dedicated office with a kitchen, a makerspace, an asynchronous filming studio, and a workshop. This growth has been made possible by the hard work of the CodeJoy team and funding from the RK Mellon Social Impact Investment Fund.
The new space not only provides room for physical expansion but also supports our vision for the future. In the coming months, CodeJoy will be evolving into "The Anything Place," a larger media company that will apply the successful CodeJoy model to other educational areas, starting with environmental education. 
The team hopes to become "PBS for the 21st Century," expanding their reach and impact in innovative ways. Consider this your verbal teaser trailer for The Anything Place:
- Imagine a world where every child has access to the most engaging, inspiring educational experiences and educators. Imagine a classroom where learning is a live adventure.
- Imagine a school where teachers are supported, equipped, and inspired to try innovative things in their classrooms.
- This is the promise of The Anything Place. The 21st century PBS, reimagined for a digital age, where learning, like always, changes everything.
- The Anything Place: Where you can learn… Anything!
Read more about the new studio here:
NASA Project
Spring 2024, CodeJoy co-produced an episode of our student show with NASA! These shows supported the NASA TechRise Student Challenge, a national competition for middle and high school students to design and create an experiment that is then sent into the stratosphere via a high altitude balloon. Deanne Bell and Marisa Cleghorn, the heads of TechRise, worked with Kelsey and Matt to develop a custom story in which Elby creates his own experiment, and the students write the code to test it. But, through the narrative of the story, Elby accidentally gets loaded onto the launch vehicle instead of his experiment! Students then get to chat with Elby from his position in the stratosphere.
This project was such fun to create! It’s only the second co-produced episode of the show we’ve created, and the first with a national audience. Every part of the process had a little extra magic because we were working with NASA: from storyboarding, to presenting our ideas to a team from NASA, to co-presenting with a real astronaut, and even sending the real Elby up to the stratosphere in a real flight was so fun!
Plus, we stretched ourselves technically and added some new features to CodeJoy.Live. We created the ability to display CircuitPython code (rather than block-based code), since that’s what the TechRise Challenge participants use themselves. And, we added a scrolling moderated live chat feature, which added a fun interactive element.
We are so grateful to the NASA TechRise Student Challenge team for involving us in their 2024 program, and we look forward to next year’s program as well!
AJ moves to Pittsburgh
CodeJoy welcomed back Amanda Jeane Strode to their teaching team this year, bringing her infectious enthusiasm and expertise to a new role as Director of Learning. Amanda Jeane, a micro:bit Champion and experienced educator, joined CodeJoy full-time to develop and teach an innovative course called "Micro:bit in the Wild." This course combines her passion for technology, environmental literacy, and interactive learning, encouraging teachers to take their micro:bits outdoors for real-world scientific applications. Now, Amanda Jeane is full time at CodeJoy doing all sorts of things to support educators across the country. Amanda Jeane is in charge of our Product Partnerships, bringing new products and PD to the CodeJoy stage. She also took over our social media and blog! Hopefully you are enjoying more posting, more frequently.
Read more about Amanda Jeane here:
CodeJoy Welcomes Back Amanda Jeane!
Check out our social media channels!
Colleen joins the Team
In an exciting addition to our CodeJoy family, we welcomed Colleen Smith as our new Partnerships, Network, and Engagement Consultant this year. Colleen brings a wealth of experience in education, community-building, and STEM initiatives, making her a perfect fit for our team. With a background that spans from supporting vulnerable students in higher education to launching innovative STEAM programs, Colleen's passion for equity and inclusivity aligns perfectly with CodeJoy's mission. In her new role, Colleen is focusing on listening to and learning from educators, with a particular emphasis on understanding the web of support for the new PA STEELS standards. Her knack for connecting people, networks, and systems is already proving invaluable as we work to enhance educational opportunities and tackle challenges in the education space. We're thrilled to have Colleen on board and can't wait to see the positive impact she'll continue to make in the coming year!
Read more about Colleen here:
CodeJoy Welcomes Colleen Smith!
Summer Infosys: New PD Courses
The Infosys USA Summer Pathfinders Institute 2024 was a huge success. We reached 483 teachers (who will reach over 120,000 students!) with our three course offerings: Micro:bit in the Wild, Practical AI for Educators, and Robot Mini Golf. Each of these courses were developed just for this initiative and are now new PD offerings. Learn more about each of these courses below:
Micro:bit in the Wild
The "Micro:bit in the Wild" program launched in summer 2024 to 200 educators across the country. The program is an innovative new approach to teaching environmental literacy using physical computing tools in the classroom. Teachers learned how to use the BBC micro:bit to integrate CS and Environmental Literacy into any subject!
Learn about some of the projects here:
Environmental Literacy with the micro:bit
Code Your Way Outdoors: Micro:bit Compass Adventures
Step it Up: Micro:bit Step Counter
AI for Educators
This course leads K-12 teachers and administrators to have a deep and meaningful experience with AI, learning about LLMs, image generation tools, integrated AI tools, and more. We also worked with our friends Aaron Maurer and Dr. Rachelle Dene Poth to bring this course to nearly 100 teachers!
Learn about perspectives on AI in education here:CodeJoy Tackles AI for Educators
CodeJoy Welcomes Rachelle Dene Poth
You can learn about AI with us today! Check out our FREE asynchronous course through Infosys Foundation USA Online Pathfinders Institute.
CodeJoy Announces New AI Asynchronous Video Course!
Robot Mini Golf
The "Robot Mini Golf, PBL with the Hummingbird Robotics Kit" program provided a structured yet flexible framework for PBL projects. Nearly 200 teachers learned how to use the Birdbrain Technologies Hummingbird Robotics Kit to do a variety of projects that they can apply to any subject!
Learn about some of the projects here:
Feedable Robot Friends and Celebratory Obstacles
Hitting a Hole In One with Engagement with Robot Mini Golf
Update to Mike’s Favorite Project
Let’s do an update on the Elby project!
After some testing I found that in general everything was working well. However, I did notice that I would lose connection to the Raspberry Pi sort of randomly.
At first I thought it may have been the fact that everything was just kind of shoved into Elby’s torso and this may have been causing the power system to short sometimes and reboot the system. To combat that I jumped back into Shapr3D and designed a bracket to hold the Raspberry Pi zero and the servo controller. After a few false starts and a concern about components over heating I created a pretty good solution.
Well the good news was that things were tidier inside Elby. The bad news was that was not the problem. My next thought was RF interference. 
There is quite a bit of potential interference being generated by the servo, power supply, etc inside a pretty small area and the WiFi antenna is embedded on the pretty small Raspberry Pi zero, I ordered a couple of tiny USB WiFi adapters and that did the trick! I then had a stable connection to the network.
Now the problem. Remember how I created the bracket to organize the inside of Elby? Well this meant there was very little space to add the microUSB to the female USB A adapter that needed to be used for the small USB WiFi adapter. After much hunting and searching online I was able to find some 90 degree angle micro USB adapters that did the trick!
To clean things up even more I went away from the 18650 battery form factor. I couldn’t find a battery box or holder that was small enough to properly fit inside. So instead I switched to a rectangular 3.7v lithium ion battery back. This provides a higher amp hour rating at the same voltage and is a much slimmer form factor.
After all that the wiring inside Elby is still a bit of a mess, but things are looking good!
I’ve also designed a circuit board and software system that can connect to Elby to control him over WiFi, but that is a different story.
I hope everyone has a great year!
-Mike
Learn more about Mike’s Favorite Project here:
My Favorite Project: Mike Cotterman
Free Public Student Shows
This year we launched our biggest campaign of Free Public Student Show yet! Every month, free Student Shows are available to classrooms all over the nation. We offered extra free Student Shows for CSEdWeek 2024. With 15 shows over the course of one week, CodeJoy was able to celebrate with 3470 students and 165 teachers! In the shows, students created 9821 codes and engaged in 50574 chats. Talk about engagement! Elby has gotten these kids coding all over the country!
New things to come in 2025
One of the most exciting new developments at CodeJoy is our new Product Partners. We have worked hard to connect with some amazing companies to bring you new products and new professional development. Meet our new Partners:
Chibitronics Paper Circuits
Chibitronics makes circuit stickers and tools for educators, artists, and crafters, so everyone can create their own expressive electronics. This is an amazing way to bring paper crafts, worksheets, and the 2D world to life. We are so excited to be bringing you CodeJoy + Chibitronics Introduction to Paper Circuits as a new PD offering.
JoyLabz Makey Makey
JoyLabz is the parent company of the most popular maker tool there is: Makey Makey. Using simple alligator clips and a USB cord, you can connect your Makey Makey to anything conductive. So, we are very excited to be connected to the amazing JoyLabz team to bring you CodeJoy + JoyLabz collaborations.
View the Makey Makey Products We Offer!
3DuxDesign Classroom Kits
Along with some new PD, we are excited to bring new products to you as well. We are selling Chibitronics Paper Circuits, JoyLabz Makey Makey, and 3Dux Design Classroom Bundles. 3DuxDesign classroom sets are perfect for schools, after-school STEM/STEAM programs, inventor clubs and more. These “all in one” maker kits are a great resource for classrooms, makerspaces, libraries and more.
View the 3DuxDesign Products We Offer!
Along with our new product partners comes some new content for teachers! We plan to do monthly Make-A-Long webinars on the third Tuesday of each month. This will give you the opportunity to meet our new partners, play alongside our team, and engage with CodeJoy on a more regular basis.
