How can we bring Coding and Programming into the Classroom?

In this episode, Jeff sits down with Kasia Chmielinski to learn how Scratch is being used in over 150 countries in more than 40 languages.

About Scratch

Scratch is a programming language and an online community where children can program and share interactive media such as stories, games, and animation with people from all over the world. As children create from Scratch, they learn to think creatively, work collaboratively, and reason systematically.

Millions of people are creating Scratch projects in a wide variety of settings, including homes, schools, museums, libraries, and community centers. To date, 9M Scratchers have shared over 12M projects to the online community.

Scratch is a project of the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab. It is provided free of charge. You can read more about Scratch here: scratch.mit.edu/about

Links of interest

• Scratch site: scratch.mit.edu
• ­ HOC landing page: scratch.mit.edu/hoc
• ­ WBB Scratch Studio: h ttps://scratch.mit.edu/studios/1672166/
• ­ Cartoon Network WBB landing page: cartoonnetwork.com/scratch
• ­ Scratch Twitter account: @Scratch
• ­ Scratch Facebook account: Facebook.com/scratchteam
• ­ Scratch Foundation site: scratchfoundation.org

YouTube Videos of Interest

• ­Student Created YouTube Channel
• Scratch Overview
• ­ What is Scratch?
• Creative Thinking Overview & History
• ­ WBB Overview: https://youtu.be/_Jlg5e8QWq0
• ­ WBB Hide­and­Seek Tutorial
• ­ WBB BearStack Tutorial
• ­ WBB Hoops Tutorial

About our Guest

Kasia Chmielinski works at the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, MA, as the Product Lead for Scratch. Scratch (scratch.mit.edu) is a free visual programming language that engages youth in imaginative learning experiences to create games, animations and stories. At MIT, Kasia is responsible for defining, designing, and managing the future roadmap of the Scratch project.

Prior to Scratch, Kasia was a founding member of the startup Zestfinance, and before that, a product communications manager at Google. Kasia hails from Boston, but dabbled in architecture and engineering at the Chinese University of Hong Kong before graduating with a degree in physics from Harvard University. When not in front of a whiteboard or a keyboard, Kasia can be found either tutoring local students in mathematics or upon a bicycle, cycling uncomfortably­long distances.

Kasia can be found on Scratch as @petrichord, and on Twitter as @kaschm.

Recorded in 2015