User:Brapacc/sandbox/breen

Derek Breen (born March 28, 1970 in Boston, Massachusetts) is an American writer, educator and graphic designer.

Biography
Derek Breen is a writer, educator and graphic designer from Boston, Massachusetts. After graduating in 1988 from King Philip Vocational High School in Wrentham, Massachusetts, Breen enlisted in the United States Navy. He completed Basic Training and attended Combat Systems Technical School to become a weapons fire control technician (FC). In January of 1990 he reported to his first ship, the USS Missouri, where he served as assistant gun liaison officer and target designation system operator. Breen was part of Operation Desert Storm and earned enlisted surface warfare specialist status before being honorably discharged from the Navy in May, 1992.

Breen attended University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and earned an interdisciplinary Bachelor of Arts degree in 1997 which combined coursework in communications, elementary education and visual/performing arts. He served as Editor-in-Chief of the weekly student newspaper, The Torch, performed with the UMass Dartmouth Theater Company and was fiction and poetry editor of the annual literary journal, Temper.

Breen studied instructional design and educational media development at Harvard Extension School, where he had a teaching fellowship in 2014. He also had a teaching fellowship at Moscow State Pedagogical University in 2016.

Breen was on the faculty of British School of Art and Design in Moscow from 2016 to 2017. He has served as instructional designer for StarLogo at MIT, new media producer for KCAL9-TV in Los Angeles, California, and owner/operator of Mod, a cybercafé and digital learning center in Charlottesville, Virginia.

In 2015 Breen started publishing books for teachers and students which explore programming, digital design and digital storytelling. Since then he has done extensive educational charity work across Europe, Asia and Africa, including serving as a special ambassador for EU Code Week and Africa Code Week. Breen's books have been translated into several languages including French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Italian, Dutch, Hungarian and Chinese.

On January 29, 2018 Breen publicly disclosed he has advanced brain cancer, discovered in 2014, which caused him to cease his international teaching and educational advocacy work in March, 2017.

Published Books

 *  Scratch For Kids for Dummies, Wiley Publishing, 2015
 *  Creating Digital Animations, Wiley Publishing, 2016
 *  Designing Digital Games, Wiley Publishing, 2016

Educational Products

 * Coding Scratch Game Design Skill Cards, ETA Hand2Mind, 2015, collaboration with Cynthia Solomon
 * Digital Game Design Curriculum Guide, i2 Learning, 2016, collaboration with Cynthia Solomon
 * StarLogo Nova, Education Arcade at MIT, led by Daniel Wendel