Page 214 - Getting the Picture Modeling and Simulation in Secondary Computer Science Education

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Curriculum Vitae
Nataša (1966) was born in Zagreb, Croatia into a family with a strong academic attitude. Her mother was an architect, her father was an engineer, and three of her grandparents were teachers or engineers as well. She attended MIOC: this acronym is world-known in Zagreb and stands for Matematičko-informatički obrazovni centar — a magnet high school for math and computer science. Nataša spent the high school senior year as an exchange student at Swartz Creek High School in Swartz Creek, Michigan, USA. When the school got their first Apple IIe computer during her stay there, she helped the CS teacher with writing computer programs in Pascal.
Back to Croatia, she studied math and CS at Zagreb University. After a number of turbulent years with accidents, illness in the family, a war and a distant Dutch boyfriend, she graduated in 1992 and moved to the Netherlands. She first started working as a freelance interpreter for refugees, and soon thereafter as a math teacher at the asylum-seekers center in Zuidlaren. There she decided to become a qualified math teacher and in 1994 graduated from UCLO in Groningen. In those days with high unemployment rate among teachers, it took her a while to find a job, but she was fortunate to be employed at OSG Sevenwolden in Heerenveen that same year.
With the national curriculum revision of 1998, her school decided to introduce the CS course and Nataša applied for a two-year in-service professional development course to become a qualified CS teacher. She graduated in 2000 and started teaching CS. In 2006, she joined the Department for Teacher Education of the Groningen University as lecturer of CS didactics.
In 2012, Nataša won a grant from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) (in Dutch: promotiebeurs voor leraren) to engage in the research project resulting in this thesis. During this project, she participated in numerous national and international research and professional conferences and took part in the development of the new curriculum for the elective CS course in Dutch HAVO and VWO. As a spin-off of this project, she has led the development of teaching materials and professional development courses for teachers.
Since 2019, Nataša had quit her high school teaching position, has been working as a researcher on the Computational Thinking in Context project at Radboud University, has joined the Board of Directors of the American Computer Science Teacher Association as International Representative, and recently she has
Curriculum Vitae