Exciting Work for Scratch Foundation! • Codified Concepts

New Website with a Learning Library

Scratch Foundation’s newly launched website includes a Learning Library that I’ve long advocated for, with over 100 entries at launch that share over 325 unique creative learning materials, from student-facing coding cards to video tutorials to lesson plans…and more! Helping create this library and many resources within it has been a labor of love and something I am incredibly proud to say that I contributed to the Scratch Foundation. And I’d be remiss not to shoutout the amazing education team that came before me, as well as current team members and partners, whose work is included in the library.

Library entries are searchable and filterable, and I’ll be continuing to add to it, so I hope you’ll take a moment to explore it and find something useful and perhaps new to you and then keep checking back!

Launching a New Webinar Series

I’ve developed and will host/facilitate a free six-part professional development series that will run September to December: “Level Up with Scratch!” We’ll explore topics from music, art, and video games to conditional statements and debugging. Whether you’re a beginner or a Scratch expert, there’s always room to Level Up!

At Scratch our learning philosophy advocates for “many pathways, many solutions,” so my goal throughout this series is to give you a variety of ways to approach creative projects on each of the six topics. Rather than provide a set of step-by-step instructions for a single project (that would mean we would all end up with the same project at the end), I want to help learners brainstorm ideas to make projects uniquely their own and speak to their passions and interests. So along the way, I’ll be giving examples of low floor (beginner-friendly) and high ceiling (level up) possibilities, making sure that educators/facilitators are empowered to engage learners with various experience in Scratch and creative coding.

And don’t forget that pair programming can be so valuable when you have groups of different experience levels. Pairing up users who are interested in drawing with users who have more experience coding, for example, can create rich and dynamic projects in addition to opportunities for them to teach and learn from each other. You don’t need to have all the answers, just a curious mind and an excitement to try new things. I really hope attendees walk away with new ideas to try and new possibilities revealed.

New Resources

I’ve wanted to offer some coding cards and video tutorials for Scratchers wanting to challenge themselves and try some advanced coding techniques, so I have been excited to launch the first four Advanced Topics videos and coding cards in our Scratch YouTube channel this past spring. I covered clones, replicating gravity in Scratch, text rendering/creating a text generator, and creating a user-controlled scrolling background.

I also created coding cards (new and updated) and lesson plans covering the physical hardware that can be used with Scratch (Makey Makey, micro:bit, Vernier Go Direct), pulling together information previously available in various places, as well as new projects ideas and example projects to inspire.

The revised Starter Projects page with 30+ new or remixed starter projects that my colleague Eric Rosenbaum and I were working on at the end of 2024 launched on the platform in February. And after hearing from educators about their desire for additional helpful posters for their classroom, I released posters featuring all blocks and the debugging strategies I helped develop for our debugging widget, which I think create a nice collection along with the Scratch Community Guidelines poster I previously helped with.

And I assisted with the launch of the new Face Sensing extension blocks and updated resources. I created a fun 1 minute teaser video featuring my oldest daughter and I, as well as others, showing off some projects for inspiration, as well an updated lesson plan, coding card set, tutorial video, interactive tutorial, and multiple project examples for launch (in this studio). With Scratch Face Sensing blocks, you can create interactive projects that use the features of your face! The blocks use a machine learning model to detect if they see a face and where a nose, eyes, ears, mouth, etc., are. The blocks do not collect or store personal information, like recordings or images of your face. Making it a safe, fun, and creative way to explore the possibilities of AI. While I, personally and as a parent, remain skeptical and critical about generative AI, I love these predictive AI blocks that also give us great avenues to discuss bias in data, the difference between our own human intelligence and AI (possibilities and pitfalls of AI), and how tools like AI can open up accessibility. They also get the body moving!

Speaking Engagements

I presented and connected with educators at the AI K12 Deeper Learning Summit in February, speaking about our Face Sensing blocks using predictive AI. I attended and presented two sessions at the OCSTA Conference in April. And I created some resources for TAG’s Coding for Climate initiative and was able to join their live Earth Day Celebration to talk with some students about their Scratch projects, which is always magical.

I’ll also have a chance to join the wonderful folks at Tinkercad for a webinar in November, “Code, Create, Connect: Teaching CS with Tinkercad and Scratch.” I’d previously hosted some sessions on Tinkercad and Scratch for our Scratch Education Collaborative members and as part of a previous Scratch in Practice workshop series. My excitement on the topic caught the eye of the Tinkercad team, and we’ve developed a new webinar first using codeblocks to create a 3D object and then bringing it into Scratch to animate it. The webinar will also feature guest expert Dr. Amon Millner from Olin College.

LEGO Me and 3D fun

On a personal note, I think my love of LEGO made Scratch feel really intuitive and appealing when I first came across it. That familiarity with trying different combinations (snapping together blocks, whether physical or coding) and building something unique really resonated with me. And this year I finally made it to LEGOLand with my family. I was also inspired to remix a LEGO set to create a big LEGO version of myself for fun. Then, I got the new Keith Haring LEGO set as a gift. And, of course, once I was finished building the set and displaying them in my office, I had to make a Scratch project uploading pictures of my build and animating them for fun.

I’ve also been working on a few new 3D prints, like new Scratch nametags, an updated Scratch Cat, and a micro:bit holder (cat-inspired, of course, which can be seen in my micro:bit lesson plan).