Scratch - Connecting Worlds

Computing At School is delighted to sponsor the Connecting Worlds Scratch Conference 2013.

Computing At School brings together over 4000 people (teachers, academics, IT professionals, parents etc) from the UK all of whom are passionate about seeing computer science taught effectively in our schools.  We have been involved in the development of the new Computing programme of study for the national curriculum for England and Wales that comes into effect in September 2014. The programme of study  includes a significant amount of computer science for both primary and secondary schools.

Many of our teachers are using Scratch to support the learning and understanding of computer science in their classrooms and with good reason.  Scratch has lowered the floor for entry into developing an understanding of computer science through programming but retains enough constructs to maintain a very high ceiling for what can be achieved through its use.  We look forward to both being able to share with you what we have achieved and bringing back other examples of good practice to share with our colleagues in the UK.

Simon Humphreys, National Coordinator Computing At School www.computingatschool.org.uk

It's kind of tradition that the people from Japanese Future University Hakodate bring workshops to the Scratch conference. After performing withg the audience at MIT in 2010 and 2012 we'll see in Barcelona the latest on their interactions between Scratch characters and puppets (preview)

The 5th international conference on Scratch will be opened by Mitch Resnick and Karen Brennan. Following is a quote from Mitch Resnicks essay "Learning to code, code to learn." 

(...) The recent surge of interest in learning to code, reflected in sites like codecademy.com and code.org, has focused especially on job and career opportunities. It is easy to understand why: the number of jobs for programmers and computer scientists is growing rapidly, with demand far outpacing supply.

But I see much deeper and broader reasons for learning to code. In the process of learning to code, people learn many other things. They are not just learning to code, they are coding to learn. In addition to learning mathematical and computational ideas (such as variables and conditionals), they are also learning strategies for solving problems, designing projects, and communicating ideas. These skills useful not just for computer scientists but for everyone, regardless of age, background, interests, or occupation. (...)

Read the full article at edSurge.

Wolfgang Slany is leading an impressive Catrobat team which brings Scratch style programming to a wild range of mobile devices. We're very happy with his participation in this conference. 

Catrobat is a visual programming language and set of creativity tools for smartphones, tablets, and mobile browsers. Catrobat and the software developed by the Catrobat team are inspired by the Scratch programming system developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab. Catrobat is a free and open source software (FOSS) project.