Vanessa Jones

CONTACT VANESSA ABOUT

• CSTA Online Professional Development
• CSTA Equity Fellow Alumni
• CSEdWeek and CS Heroes

My CSTA Story

Vanessa was a 2021–22 CSTA Equity Fellow, and she now supports and manages the Equity Fellow Alumni Network. Since going through the program herself, she can relate on a personal level to the needs and expectations of the Equity Fellow Alumni. Vanessa also designs, develops, and supports a series of equity-focused online PD courses that positively impact CS teacher practice. One of Vanessa’s highlights is organizing and collaborating with other organizations for various CSEdWeek events, which includes organizing and supporting CSTA’s CS Heroes.

My Story

Prior to joining CSTA, Vanessa was a technology design coach for the Austin Independent School District in Austin, TX, where she worked at the district level helping to implement and facilitate blended and personalized technology-integrated learning experiences. She is a facilitator for Code.org’s CS Fundamentals and CS Discoveries programs and has trained hundreds of teachers in the basics of computer science. Vanessa is an online facilitator and course designer for the University of Texas at Austin’s Expanding Pathways in Computing (EPIC) program and helped to redesign the course Strategies for Effective and Inclusive Computer Science Teaching. She graduated from the University of Texas at Austin, earned her master’s degree from North Texas University, and has taught in grades 3–6.

In her free time, she loves to spend time with her fur children, Simba Marley and Marlo-Jaxson Jones. She loves to travel and cruise around the world, experiencing different cultures and foods.