Welcome to this special conversation between Jie Qi, CEO of Chibitronics, Shiela Lee, Head of Education at Chibitronics, and Amanda Jeane Strode, Director of Learning at CodeJoy. In this blog, we bring together these innovative educators to discuss their shared passion for STEAM education and the exciting partnership between Chibitronics and CodeJoy (including the opportunity for educators to join us in May for a free webinar!). Through their unique perspectives as educators and industry leaders, they explore how play and magic can enhance learning experiences in the classroom. Join us as they delve into their backgrounds, the evolution of their educational philosophies, and how their collaboration aims to support teachers in creating engaging and accessible STEAM lessons.
Jie Qi (JQ): Hello, I'm Jie. I am the co-founder and now CEO of Chibitronics. Chibitronics is a company that makes creative learning tool kits that blend paper crafts and art with coding and circuitry. My background is actually in engineering, but I've always loved art, and especially paper crafts. I've been obsessed with origami since I was three. Before I could read, I could look at the pictures, and so that has never left me. And then when I went to college and learned about the wonderful world of engineering and then coding, I was like, "Oh my god, these two can come together and make my paper crafts come to life!"
And suddenly, all those exams that I had to take became interesting because it empowered me to create cool new stuff. That's the genesis behind Chibitronics, where I just wanted to share this cool way of making magical interactive things while, you know, also being a really fun way to learn these concepts along the way.
Shiela Lee (SL): Hi, I'm Shiela. I'm the head of education at Chibitronics and also an associate software engineer. And I actually started out as a classroom teacher in New York City public schools. I was introduced to Chibitronics’ products when I was a Computer Science Teachers Association Equity Fellow. I was at our Equity Summit Conference and won a raffle in a Chibitronics workshop for one of their kits. And when I won the raffle I had this immediate thought that I could apply the circuitry to a paper circuit Portrait Project for all my students.
I started doing paper circuit portraits with my fourth grade students and for the next few years really fell in love with the products. When I eventually made the transition to leave the classroom, Jie reached out, and now I am heading education and expanding our initiatives in education. I also get to do some coding on the side for some of our projects, and I really enjoy pursuing these two interests. I’m really happy to be here.
Amanda Jeane Strode (AJS): That is so whimsical that you won Chibitronics in a raffle basket!
JQ: This is fate.
AJS: My name is Amanda Jeane and I'm the Director of Learning at CodeJoy. CodeJoy is an educational media company and we do professional development for teachers. We sell cool stuff like Chibitronics, and we do live interactive Student Shows. What CodeJoy really specializes in is large-scale initiatives. We look to work with big organizations and grants that fund free PD and free stuff for teachers. That's really what we do absolutely the best. For CodeJoy, I do all kinds of things. I do product partnership relations, I do all of our social media and content creation, I teach teachers on screen and a lot of other stuff.
How did each of you get involved in STEAM education?
AJS: I was a classroom teacher. So in my very first year of teaching I was very fortunate to get invited to a robotics training. BirdBrain Technologies came to my school district out in Eastern Pennsylvania and I was the only classroom teacher in that training. They were all librarians. I was lucky and I had met an administrator who asked, “Hey would you be interested in… ?” My whole philosophy at that moment in time in my life was to say yes to everything. I didn't know anything about STEAM or STEM or maker other than, you know, I have a lifelong career of crafting. I joined the robotics training and I fell in love, and I've been doing maker education ever since. Now I get to help teachers do STEM all the time. It's very fun.
SL: I'll piggy back off that because, of course, I was also a classroom teacher. I started off as a Special Education second grade inclusive classroom teacher. Even when I was in an inclusive setting where almost 12 out of 24 or 30 students had individual educational plans, I still managed to integrate robotics and coding into the general education curriculum. I had become exposed to STEAM education through the New York City Public School professional development workshop series. When they first offered classes and workshops on programming and coding, I was like, "Oh, this sounds so interesting. I've always been interested in this." So, I attended some of their workshops and then started integrating it slowly into the inclusive classroom. I also did some after school classes with some of my schools. But, it wasn't until COVID happened and the pandemic that my principal really saw a need for us to not only expand the CS curriculum, but also technology programs. She asked me if I wanted to be in the specialist role, and I said, "Oh, I've always loved to do that. Yes, I could." I would still be teaching students with special needs; it was great. I'd be teaching the whole school now instead of just second grade. So during the pandemic, I did that for another three to four years. Altogether I spent about 11 years in the New York City Public School system.
JQ: Wow, it's really fun to hear your stories. Mine, maybe, does not piggyback as much, because I was not formerly a teacher. I stumbled into education, I guess, in a way. I started out studying mechanical engineering, because I wanted to build stuff. Actually, I do share that in common! We all do love to build things. In grad school, I worked on creating new technologies for crafts. When I was first starting I was more interested in the artistic side, like, “What new stories can we tell? What new interactions can we invent?” Then, because I've always loved paper, it was natural that everything I did involved paper— like paper sensors, paper actuation, paper this that. I made lots of fun projects and artworks. It became clear that this was really interesting for other folks, too. I started doing workshops, and for my master's thesis, I was very curious to ask, “What would engineers do with these tools?” Along with, “What would artists and designers do with these tools?” So I actually partnered with the STEAM club at MIT and at RISD. I was at MIT at the time and RISD was an hour away. So I taught this winter week-long course for a bunch of students and looked at the differences between the engineers and the artists. I realized engineers are really creative and artistic, and designers and artists are really builders, technical, and thoughtful. That intersection of the two, like STEAM, became even more fascinating to me. I didn't want to be the only one making paper circuits; it became natural then to create tools, do workshops, and share. I'm curious about what other people do with this stuff. It's like having a conversation rather than doing it alone.
SL: Jie, one of the things that you always talk about that I find so insightful, is electronics and circuitry can be very intimidating, but paper is very familiar. I love the idea that combining paper art and circuits is a great way to help students and teachers see that there's a path forward.
JQ: It’s magical. To make paper move and make sounds and light up and respond to you, it's really cool.
AJS: It's really cool to hear how education evolved as part of your own learning process, Jie, then how that transformed into your education-oriented company. I think that Chibitronics and CodeJoy have a lot in common, particularly in our philosophies. Much of the pedagogy behind decisions that are made, the material we decide to use is very very similar. CodeJoy is very constructivist. We believe in design thinking and project-based learning, and these are present at Chibitronics as well.
JQ: It’s the same family tree we’re all sprouting from.
AJS: I am continually enthused. I'd like to pinpoint a word I hear when you talk about Chibitronics; you use the word magic. And I just love that! One of the words we use here at CodeJoy a lot is play. These are such wonderful words that have sifted out of the education system over time. We try to play with kids and we try to have magical moments with students. That can be hard when teachers need to follow standards, and take tests, and do all the things that are required. But at the end of the day, you know, a great learning experience is playful and it's magical.
JQ: Play is so important. It's not easy with all those limitations in the classroom, but I think if we're able to achieve it, play and magic are stronger, deeper learning experiences. So that's the dream.
AJS: I think we can build that together in our new partnership.
SL: Speaking of partnerships, I was actually wondering, Amanda Jeane, CodeJoy partners with so many different wonderful organizations, how do you prioritize which projects and partnerships?
AJS: Partnerships wise, CodeJoy, being a small company, and working through growing, we're a little picky. Matt and Kelsey are very careful to express to me, especially as I have been joining on as a new employee and learning the ropes, that we don't just sell any product. We don't just work with any organization. There have to be commonalities, and we're interested in what's best for teachers. All of our partnerships, from product partners to grant partners, have a lot of those common threads. So it’s very important at CodeJoy that we're centering teachers and the people we work with are also centering teachers. When it comes to a project, whether it's a project that goes into a classroom for kids, or a project that we work on as an organization for a large-scale initiative, I think that there are important key elements. We always ask, “What's best in a classroom?” There is an overall aesthetic at CodeJoy that I think bleeds into everything that we do. Some of that is simplicity. If you watch a CodeJoy Student Show, you'll notice that the visuals, the characters, the colors, the lines are very simple. And if you translate that over too to the way we do professional development, the goal is to make it as simple as possible. We try to use as few tools as possible. We want to make it accomplishable for the teacher that has high constraints and low confidence. A lot of edtech companies are focused on a different teacher. They want teachers like me and Sheila. They want the teacher that has high confidence and low constraints, someone who's just super willing to jump in. But the CodeJoy teacher, the person that we design for, is the opposite. The person that looks at this and thinks, “Paper circuits, oh, no! That's not for me. That's too complicated. I'm going to hurt myself.” That's exactly the teacher we want. We want them to have a transformational experience where not only do they get to do something they didn't think they could do, but they walk away saying, "I could do this with kids.”
AJS: So, what's your experience with teachers and professional development at Chibibitronics?
SL: I could start us off. At Chibi we run a Summer Pathfinders workshop called Start with Art: STEAM Learning with Chibitronics Paper Circuits through Infosys Foundation USA. We've been doing it for several years now. We hold these workshops during the summer so that teachers can engage in a community. We can show them how some of our products work in the classroom. One of our aims is to also help teachers feel more comfortable. So just like you were saying, Amanda Jeane, about how you want to reach teachers that may not always have high confidence (or low constraints), we're doing the same. On the flip side, we also have teachers that are very confident with our products and we want to engage them at the same time to create this nice community of Chibi educators. Our summer workshops are in-depth, and they range from beginner topics to advanced topics. For this upcoming summer, we have our Summer Pathfinders workshop for the whole entire month of July. Teachers can choose what is flexible for their schedule. And we're also planning to have webinars— which CodeJoy will be joining as a guest speaker — for one of our topics! We're very excited about that. We hope to reach more teachers to feel comfortable using paper circuits in their classrooms. We've seen teachers that bring circuitry and arts into school and it really creates a much more engaging classroom. We hope to just provide that support for teachers.
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AJS: CodeJoy is also participating in Summer Pathfinders and we are really excited to offer three courses: Micro:bit in the Wild, Robot Petting Zoo PBL with Hummingbird, and AI Literacy and Ethics for Educators. One of my favorite things about this initiative in particular is supporting teachers with FREE things. Teachers can really struggle to get things that they deserve and this is an amazing opportunity to give free PD and free hardware. Summer Pathfinders is only for public school teachers and coaches, public charter school teachers and coaches, and school librarians. Please tell your friends and sign up for all of our courses!
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JQ: Our dream is to offer these learning and connection opportunities beyond the summer and that's why we're partnering with CodeJoy. It's fascinating to see CodeJoy’s take on paper circuits. How do you translate it into your flavor of simplicity and accessibility and friendliness, especially for those educators who might be like, “Oh this isn't for me!”? That's exactly who we are hoping to support. We're also in the process of reviving our Educator Ambassadors Program. Through this program, we get together educators who are excited to learn Chibitronics with us, we train them, and then they help share with other educators while working with us to co-develop new resources and new products. In my experience, usually the best person to learn from is someone who's been in the classroom and uses paper circuits with lots of students. That's something else that we're in the early stages of developing more.
SL: The workshops that we hold are a great opportunity for us as a company to see how we can get feedback from our educator community to make our products much more accessible. We've had teachers come to us ask, “How do you scale this for 30 students or 120?” This feedback is essential to further refine our product and also support them. Hopefully, when we bring back the Educator Ambassador program, we can create a much more tight-knit relationship with a cohort of educators who can be ambassadors and help us really tailor our products and resources to work in the classroom where there are a lot of students.
AJS: I'm excited to be part of the Chibitronics feedback loop. The professional development we do is live and it's so personalized toward school districts and their initiatives. As we build our Chibitronics course, you're going to see that our process is so iterative. As the needs of schools and the products you offer change, our course will change along with it. And, much of that will be based on the feedback of the teachers we teach. We'll be part of that loop for you too, sharing ideas brought up by teachers.
JQ: We have a PD opportunity coming up in May too.
SL: That’s right, we’re doing a webinar together.
AJS: Join CodeJoy and Chibitronics for an exciting and interactive webinar designed specifically for educators! In this one-hour session, we’ll explore how to combine creativity and technology to make art that lights up — literally. Using the innovative Circuit Sketcher platform, you’ll learn how to design circuits directly into your artwork and projects, unlocking endless possibilities for classroom activities.
This webinar is all about fun and play. Together, we’ll dive into hands-on activities, share ideas for integrating STEAM concepts into your lessons, and spark inspiration for your students. Whether you’re new to circuits or a seasoned pro, this session will leave you energized and ready to bring creative tech into your teaching toolbox.
Creative Circuits: CodeJoy & Chibitronics Explore Circuit Sketcher
May 13, 2025 7-8pm EST
