Quick Bio

Jim Burnham is currently a Mechatronics Instructor at Silicon Valley Career Technical Education High School. Mechatronics means, “Fire Breathing Robots”. Teaching High School has always “noodled” in his head, and in 2016, he made the jump from Corporate world to teaching High School students.

First teaching a year of Cybersecurity, and then in 2017, started a Mechatronics program at Silicon Valley CTE. Jim has taught summer STEAM academies, Youth technology workshops, Boy Scouts (herding cats) and other workshops that include teaching kids how to hack the world with Arduino’s and Raspberry Pi’s.

He especially enjoys teaching students about microcontrollers & microcomputers. Helping them learn to code, many for the first time. Jim’s language skills include, Spanish, Python, Perl, HTML, C and C++, VHDL and Verilog.

Longer Bio

Jim Burnham is currently a Mechatronics Instructor at Silicon Valley Career Technical Education High School. When you ask his students what Mechatronics means, they say, “Fire Breathing Robots”.

Jim is energetic and passionate about teaching students Science and Technology. He has always loved to teach and to see students learn new ideas and realize that Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Math, and all things Nerdy are fun and cool. Jim especially like to see that moment when they when they “get it”.

Jim has taught summer STEAM academies, Youth technology workshops, Boy Scouts (herding cats) and other workshops that include teaching kids how to hack the world with Arduino’s and Raspberry Pi’s. He especially enjoys teaching students about microcontrollers & microcomputers. Helping them learn to code, many for the first time.

His High School students most enjoy stripping a printer down to its last screw, solenoid, stepper motor, optical switch, etc, and then create something with all the salvaged parts.

Jim’s language skills include, Spanish, Python, Perl, HTML, C and C++, VHDL and Verilog.

Jim graduated from Brigham Young University with a bachelor’s of science degree in Electronics Engineering Technology. After college, he worked briefly for Beehive Telephone, a small telephone company based in Wendover Nevada. There he was responsible for designing the digital hardware data logger that was attached to their telephone switch. Basically, he measured and logged when a call started, how long it was and when it hung up… But also, had to put on a hard hat and dig trenches with a backhoe when someone accidentally dug up the phone cables.

After Beehive Telephone, Jim ended up in California, and worked to Amdahl where he was responsible for assembling and testing their Main Frame Computers. This was an interesting job, where he was also tasked with improving the documentation. Most of the original documentation was in Japanese, and did not have very good visual diagrams. One of his assignments was to update and create new documentation in English with detailed assembly diagrams.

Then Jim found his “Dream Job”. He had a friend from college that worked at Xilinx, and one Saturday he when over to see what cool cutting-edge technology Xilinx was involved in. Jim was instantly enamored and the next Monday started working on how to get a job there… 25 years later he still loves Technology.

Teaching High School has always “noodled” in his head, and in 2016, he made the jump from Corporate world to teaching High School students. First teaching a year of Cybersecurity, and then in 2017, started a Mechatronics program at SVCTE.

SVCTE is a Public High school that serves 6 local Silicon valley high school districts (Campbell Union High School, East Side Union High School, Los Gatos-Saratoga Union High School, Milpitas Unified School, San Jose Unified School, Santa Clara Unified School Districts)