Droidcon Boston '19: Keynote: Lessons from Teaching Android on the Ground and in the Cloud

What you'll learn

Chances are that you're a teacher - whether you've formally taught in a classroom, shared an engineering experience as a talk or blog post, or helped out someone new on your team. Since you're a teacher, you should care about being a good teacher. Good teaching empowers those around you and nurtures healthy technical communities. Also, teaching doesn't need to be entirely altruistic - often the best way to truly learn something is to teach it. My education career started over a decade ago. It has included teaching at an all girl's STEM school in Rwanda and for the last five years as an online instructor for Google's Android courses. The Google courses are by far the biggest "classroom" I've been a part of, with a diverse and driven pool of students. Android has also had seismic changes over the past few years. These facts combined make Android a subject where teachers need to continually adapt, iterate and hone their skills. In this talk, I'll share what it's like behind the scenes: scripting, filming and producing Android classes for hundreds of thousands of students, including what we got right, and what took a few tries. From this, I'll cover reflections and practical takeaways about teaching Android and teaching in general. Because I am a teacher and so are you!

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