About Me
Hello everyone! This is Mandy here, well actually my name is Amanda Mareco but I feel weird when people call me Amanda, that is reserved mostly for very professional environments 🙃. I am from Luque, in Paraguay, where I live with my boyfriend and 2 gorgeous kitties called Katia and Blanquita (which means Whitey in English).
I am finishing up my carrer (I hope I can finish this year lol) of Electronics Engineering with an emphasis on Mechatronics. All that is left for me to graduate is my Thesis, and well, I can call myself an engineer at last 😄
My work related life
Right now, I'm working as the MakerSpace manager in a school in Asuncion called "Colegio del Sol". I have been working here for the past 2 years teaching kids how to be more involved with the DIY culture, using PBL with teams of teachers for awesome things and also by being the coach and teacher for the Robotics clubs for the extracurricular activities as well.
I have a passion for all things robotics and educational toys related, ever since I started in this field I loved discovering new ways of teaching and learning and just having ideas flow around all the time.
Some of the projects I've worked on the last year with my students were related to automatas, stop motion movies, digital animation, Scratch animation, 3D designing in Tinkercad, learning Design Thinking by fast prototyping and many many other things! I even worked with biomaterials with one group and learned so much with them as well. Here a collection of pictures showing all of this things.
Middle: we made cardboard automatas to represent animals!
Right: Some kids learning how to use "Brush Ninja" a platform to make digital animations
Middle: Showcase of the products achieved in the Biomaterials workshops we had, we used many different techniques.
Right: We made towers using different materials and using fast prototyping!
Where I put most of myself tho is in the robotics teams that are under my wing, I've learned a lot coaching this kids, and we have participated in many competitions, some of them even earning us trophies, which I'm super proud of.
Travelling is fun
I have had other endeavours before starting teaching at schools that allowed me to travel, thing that I am very grateful for, like being a coach for a Student Bootcamp in the University of St Gallen, in the city of St Gallen on Switzerland for 2 weeks, thanks to Penguin Academy, a company that makes learning coding quick and easy here in Paraguay.
I also went to China thanks to a scholarship offered by Huawei, where I learned a lot about many of their technologies and also about the chinese culture. I had a great time in Beijing and Shenzen, where the Huawei University is at.
Things I do besides work (hobbies, and others)
Now regarding my hobbies and other things that I like doing, I also have a diploma for acting school I know, I live in many different worlds xd, and I have done some school plays and filmed short videos in the last years to keep on training. Acting is something that honestly keeps me sane and grounded, art in general honestly is my getaway.
Middle: A short scene that we filmed based on Se7en. I was doing Brad Pitt's role xdd
Right: My last play in the school was with an awesome director from Paraguay called Tana Schembori, she directed "7 Boxes!"
Here you can see me in action lol, (but literally, I did this in an Action stunts workshop hahah)
Besides acting, some other art related things I enjoy are mostly about using my hands xddd (I am a maker teacher for a reason). I love painting with watercolors, I have done some sculptures and tried to learn a bit of that too, I have a little project going on that is to build a miniature of a Kiki's Delivery Service Shop, and I used to write, like a lot. I still do write, but mostly for work, I need to get my creative writing flowing again soon.
