After her studies (Textile and Dutch educator) in Delft, Pauline worked in Information Technology (ICT) at a variety of companies, learning on the job, and often as the only woman employed in ICT. After twenty years she decided that “If I want more female colleagues, I have to teach them.” She started her own company 4PIP, teaching ICT and technology in schools and giving workshops for teachers. She noticed that there were not many coding books for children, and in 2008, her first book about GameMaker was published. More books followed about coding and how to implement coding in your school (CodeKlas). Since 2018 she has been the EU Coding Ambassador and is organizing CodeWeek in The Netherlands. Two days a week she is an ICT teacher at Royal Visio (a school for visually impaired students where she is implementing the Coding Curriculum). The rest of the week she is writing, giving lectures and workshops, and having fun with making lots and lots of projects. Once Peter met Pauline in the summer of 2016, they created over 100 micro:bit projects, published on https://microbit101.nl website. In 2019 they presented the craziest projects at the BBC microbit:live event in Manchester. Many of these projects were the start of this book. For her, the micro:bit is the best way to implement computational thinking at schools and is the perfect way for people of all ages to make, invent, learn, code, solve problems, work together, persevere—and have fun! Pauline Maas (pauline@4pip.nl)
