The Mandalas by Scratch collaboration workshop was motivated by the Ambassador program and the need to attract more females into STEM.  I have been working with Deutsche Telekom for a couple of years, primarily supporting cybersecurity and marketing.  My main POC informed me of a possible "Hackathon" that they have introduced to German students.  I really liked that idea, and the possibility of bringing students over to a Deutsche Telekom facility would be extremely educational.  However, we were near the end of the school year and did not have time or funding for a field trip.

So, after further discussions, my POC introduced me to another education outreach contact working in Darmstadt.  He was keen on coming over to the school and perform a pilot of a new program he had developed - Mandalas.

Believe it or not, this workshop almost did not materialize as the only week that the trainers could attend was during the week of our standardized testing.  Fortunately, I was able to find a single day to which Freshman were not testing.

The collaborative experience was fantastic and because of this experience, I will now include this as part of my Coding class.  I will also provide the course material to other middle and high school teachers in the district.