DevTech’s pedagogical approach can be found in Marina Bers’ latest book Coding as a Playground: Programming and Computational Thinking in the Early Childhood Classroom.  Visit this book guide for activity suggestions for hands-on play, prompts for reflection and discussion and opportunities to take the concepts discussed in each book chapter further with additional resources.

Early Childhood Technology Webinar Series
Join ECT faculty, students, and alums for a discussion about the future of STEAM and technology education for children following the COVID-19 pandemic.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the Spring of 2020, the Early Childhood Technology (ECT) Graduate Certificate hosted a series of webinars presented by DevTech Researchers and ECT alumni and instructors on early childhood education with a focus on technology. Today, we are still providing free, high quality webinars with useful information and ideas for learning at home and at school. Find these recordings on our Webinar page.

DevTech Summer Professional Development

Programs are currently cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Please check back for more updates in the future

Graduate Certificate Program in Early Childhood Technology

The Early Childhood Technology (ECT) certificate program is designed for educators and practitioners working with young children in pre-kindergarten through second grade in diverse educational settings such as schools, museums, libraries, and daycares. The program will develop students’ knowledge and skills in technology and engineering with a focus on early childhood.

Curriculum Resources

Computer programming is becoming an essential skill in the 21st century. Through developmentally appropriate platforms such as KIBO and ScratchJr, DevTech has created comprehensive coding curricular resources to enable teachers to help young children start learning about programming and develop computational thinking skills.

There is no prior coding experience necessary!

Our lesson plans and classroom activities are designed to support both you and your students! We’ve developed engaging educational content that uses KIBO, ScratchJr, and the Coding as Another Language (CAL) approach using both KIBO and ScratchJr. Additionally, funded by the The David Lear Sulman Computing, Science, and Engineering Fund for Jewish Day Schools, we’ve also developed a Jewish Curricula Series that integrates coding, robotics and computational thinking with Judaic Studies.

For Prof. Marina Bers’ CSHD 145: Technological Tools for Playful Learning class, undergraduate and graduate students from across disciplines at Tufts University created 3-hour literacy-based curricula for children to learn coding with ScratchJr, Scratch, and KIBO. View those here.

Grant Resources

There are different ways to receive funding for materials like KIBO or tablets for ScratchJr.  The following is a list of grants for teachers and educators. DevTech is not associated with any of the following organizations, but we want teachers to have a resource that helps them know of opportunities for funding.