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Jeff sits down with Patricia Hillyer and Richard Ginn of BlackRocket to discuss how BlackRocket is helping students create amazing video games and learn the art of coding!
About Black Rocket
This year Black Rocket served almost 20,000 students nationwide through their unique Creative Technology Programs offered during school, after school, and through summer enrichment. Engaging every student, easy enough for any teacher Black Rocket's new universal game-based learning software is in use in New Jersey, New York, Maryland, Ohio and beginning in January in California.For any student, any subject  any grade and any ability, the company's co-owner Richard Ginn, a teacher of the year award winner from a recent "Number One School in America" according to US News and World Reports, says: "If you can engage a child you can teach them anything. And if you can't engage them it doesn't matter what you are trying to teach."
Empowering students to write their own video games about the learning goals their teachers establish is based on three decades of research from leading edge Stanford University and is the epitome of individualized learning as much as standardized testing is not. With six levels of assessment built in, this new software makes teachers lives easier! Imagine that."Every student improved" according to the first teacher to use the software with her students, JoAnn Devito.For more information, visit www.blackrocket.com/edu or email bill@blackrocket.com.
Links of Interest

@BlackRocketLLC
www.blackrocket.com
www.blackrocket.com/edu
thegrid.blackrocket.com


About our Guests
About Richard Ginn
Black Rocket's president, Richard Ginn, is a former teacher of the year from High Technology High School in Monmouth County, NJ. US News and World Report recently ranked "High Tech" as America’s number one high school, and as a school known for integrating technology. Richard is also a former administrator in Freehold. Today, Richard leads the company's highly regarded Professional Development arm which specializes in mainstreaming Technology, Innovation and Game-ification into today's classroom so that it is easy for the teacher to use and students to leverage. Richard recently returned from speaking to VTEAA, the Virginia Technology Educators Association which represents every Tech Coordinator in Virginia with high marks and he is scheduled to speak to leading California Superintendents in the Fall. Email Rich via rich@blackrocket.com.
About Patricia J. Hillyer
Patricia has been in education for over 25 years. She received her Bachelors of Science degree in Biology from Fairleigh Dickinson University-Madison and went on to receive her Masters of Arts in Teaching from Monmouth University. Currently, Patricia is teaching seventh-grade science at Matawan-Aberdeen Middle School, where she has been instrumental in training teachers in technology as well as in the forefront of bringing new technology to the classroom for her students.  Patricia has been performing physics and engineering research at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory for over 20 years. Patricia models her teaching by using project-based learning. She has presented her best practices at the New Jersey Science Convention, NJEA convention and at the National Science Teachers Convention. She has been awarded multiple grants and awards from PPPL and NASA for supplies and technology in her classroom. Through PPPL and NASA, Patricia flew in zero gravity, experimenting on the effects of microgravity on soap bubbles. Though her research experiences at PPPL, which included tracking tritium though the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor, developing a plasma-based nanotechnology laboratory, using plasmas to convert biomass to biofuels and invented a way to increase solar panel efficiency through evaporative mist (patent-pending), Patricia has brought her research to her classroom. Seeing the importance of hands-on research for students, her students conduct their own research during the course of the school year. She currently is certified to borrow lunar rocks and meteorites from NASA.  You can find out more about her adventures at www.iHillyer.wordpress or follow her @iHillyer on Twitter or @mrshillyer on Instagram or like her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/hillyerscience .