Callysto Blog

The Callysto team would like to thank everyone who submitted ideas for our most recent call for proposals for classroom learning activities. We’re pleased to announce the six individuals and organizations from across Canada who have received funding. Their projects will use new and creative ways to promote computational thinking, coding and data literacy among […]

In my previous blog post, I talked about the value of incorporating data visualizations into non-traditional classes, like English, while meeting formal Alberta curriculum outcomes. This blog describes how I recently did just that. Connecting the ePortfolio Reflections to ELA 20-2 Course Outcomes and Formal writing Performance tasks The intention was for students, after they […]

Part One: How and why to incorporate data visualizations into your lessons During my time as a high school English teacher, I was frequently looking for ways to integrate data literacy into my classroom in a meaningful and authentic way. This is why the Callysto data visualizations have been intentionally designed to integrate computational thinking […]

Lara Winstone first heard about Callysto at the October 2020 Computer Using Educators of British Columbia conference. Winstone teaches computer science, information technologies (IT), and mathematics at Sentinel Secondary School in Vancouver, British Columbia. At the conference, she learned how Callysto can be used to teach students to develop and apply data science skills (coding, […]

In a previous blog post we gave tips on how teachers can share our online learning modules with others. These learning modules run off of the Callysto Hub, a free, online workspace that doesn’t store any personal information. In this post, we’ll provide additional best practices on sharing Callysto learning modules. Sharing Callysto learning module […]

If you teach Grades 5-12 students in Canada, Callysto wants to help fund your classroom activities related to computational thinking, data science, and coding. Callysto is a free, online program that helps Grades 5-12 students and teachers in Canada learn and apply in-demand data science skills including data analysis, visualization, coding, and computational thinking. This […]

The week I joined Callysto, the team was running an online data science hackathon, “Colonizing Mars” (which ran June 3-5, 2020), for Grades 9-12 students across Canada. Participants were given three days to complete their data science challenges.  As an experienced K-12 teacher, and former Technology Specialist from an Alberta school district, I anticipated would […]

How the re-imagining began The COVID-19 pandemic caused a seemingly overnight shift to online learning for many students and teachers across Canada. We also experienced this shift at Callysto. For us, this shift meant pivoting in-person data science hackathons (geared towards Grades 9-12 students) to an online format. In our data science hackathons, students solve […]

From August 5-10, 2020, Callysto went “back” to the red planet for another hackathon. Participating Grades 9-12 students from across Canada were challenged with the following mission: Callysto hackathons are designed to challenge students to solve challenges through coding and data analysis. The goal of these events, and the Callysto project in general, is to […]

Callysto’s first online student hackathon, held in April 2020, was so well received that we decided to hold another! Our second online hackathon, Colonizing Mars, ran June 3-5, 2020. Hackathon participants, made up of Grades 9-12 students from across Canada, were challenged with the following mission: Callysto hackathons are designed to challenge students to solve […]

Last year, Gustaaf Wehnes – a computer science teacher at William Aberhart High School in Calgary, Alberta – heard about a Callysto workshop from a colleague. He attended the session and learned how Callysto uses Jupyter notebooks to teach data science. Jupyter notebooks are free, online documents that allow users to create and share documents […]

Thanks to everyone who submitted proposals for phase 2 of Callysto’s Call for Proposals. This initiative supports digital literacy learning opportunities for teachers and students across Canada. We’re pleased to award funding to several organizations. The funded activities from these organizations – from greenhouse automation to machine learning – will promote coding and computational thinking for […]