Episode #146: "I Have SOMETHING To Say" with special guest, Marcos Navas

<p><span data-ogsc="black">Three months ago I told my 15-year-old son that we were going to dive in headfirst into Metaverse Marketing. His answer: “So lame…the Metaverse has been around forever. What do you think Minecraft and Fortnite are?”</span><span data-ogsc="black"> </span></p> <p><span data-ogsc="black">Me: “Ah! But we’ve figured out an entire list of business applications using this technology and we have assembled a freakin’ amazing team to create customized branded spaces.” Then, my son smiled (gotcha, papito!)</span></p> <p><span data-ogsc="black">Here’s the inside scoop. In this episode of I HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY I talk to Marcos Navas, Founder of Hands On Coding – and now my business partner in the tech realm. We were introduced by one of his relatives, my dear longtime friend Emma Medina who I know from way back when I worked in publishing. THANK YOU, EMMA!</span></p> <p><span data-ogsc="black">Navas has been an active member of the Ed Tech space for over two decades. As an advocate for raising the voice of students, he is one of the original Flipgrid ambassadors and a Ted Ed Innovative Educator helping spread student Ted Talks via Ted Clubs.</span></p> <p><span data-ogsc="black" data-ogsb="white">Within the coding and STEM space, Navas is one of the original Raspberry Pi Certified Educators in the U.S. helping enable people of all ages to explore computing. He completed a fellowship with the IDEO Teachers Guild making him one of ten educational experts trained in Design Thinking.</span></p> <p><span data-ogsc="black" data-ogsb="white">He also founded Ed CampUrban, a free professional development program for urban educators/teachers implemented by teachers, and Latinos in Coding, a nonprofit whose mission is to increase awareness and participation of the Hispanic community in computer sciences to remedy the equity gap of Latinos in STEM.</span></p> <p><span data-ogsc="black" data-ogsb="white">Listen, this guy is on a serious mission to transform educational environments to give access to and teach