6 insightful talks at Scratch Conference Europe!

The Raspberry Pi Foundation hosted the first ever Scratch Conference Europe event to take place in the UK last weekend. From Friday 23 – Sunday 25 August more than 300 Scratchers, educators, and Raspberry Pi community members from 28 countries descended on Cambridge to share and learn from one another’s experiences.

The conference was a great opportunity for CoderDojo volunteers and the Foundation to connect with makers and educators from around the world. We were amazed by the innovative and inspiring talks, workshops and discussions. Below are just a selection of the learnings gained over the weekend.

 

Coding at a crossroads: Mitch Resnick’s Keynote speech

The creator of Scratch gave a thoughtful speech on the importance of Scratch as a tool for expression and creativity, and how we can encourage its use in this way.

How to grow your Community: CoderDojo Japan

Yohei shared the approaches they have focused on in order to grow clubs and develop a volunteer community in Japan over the years. He highlighted the importance of face-to-face discussions and benefits of having introductory resources easily available. He also emphasised the benefit of champions being able to shape their clubs within the parameters of the CoderDojo charter. See Yohei’s presentation.

Machine Learning with Scratch

This was a really popular session (and a popular topic in general over the weekend). Attendees, interested in how Scratch can be used to practically illustrate machine learning, packed out the room where the workshop was on! See Nic’s presentation slides here. You can also find additional machine learning resources here.

 

Facilitating Ideation: Design Thinking

Tara and Rosa’s workshop on idea generation and design thinking was a hands on experience for all involved. You can use these worksheets to try it in your club. The slides used during the workshop are available here.

If you were on a desert island with a box full of junk what would you make to survive? Apparently a water filtration system using reverse osmosis, a stylish hat, a hammock and a multipurpose house! @Tara_CoderDojo and I ran a fun session on design thinking at #scratcheurope pic.twitter.com/bjtIYgeg5R

— Rosa Langhammer (@RosaLanghammer) August 24, 2019

Creative, collaborative projects using the micro:bit radio

Attendees learned how to connect and send data between micro:bits in creative and fun ways in this hands on workshop. You can see the slides, which include additional resource links here.

Debugging in Scratch

This session, presented by a Code Club volunteer, noted the most common errors young people make in Scratch and how you can fix them! See Sean’s blog and slides for the workshop here.

 

Other highlights…

These are just a small selection of some of the talks and discussions that were held over the weekend. Other highlights include:

• how to create Makey Makey story books
• learning about the challenges Go Ota of CoderDojo IchikawaMama in Japan is trying to combat
• how to better engage and support girls
• learning about the Scratch 3 game development toolkit a CoderDojo volunteer is making
• learning about CoderDojo growth partners
• how you can use emojis as costumes
• how you can introduce robotics to your club with crumble
• the importance of understanding cognitive load in a learning environment

Thanks to all those who participated, helped out and shared their learnings and experience over the weekend!

What an inspiring weekend at #ScratchEurope ????

Loved meeting, chatting and learning with so many Scratch and CoderDojo community members including those from Bulgaria, Belgium, all corners of Italy, Ireland, Japan and the UK ♥️♥️♥️#BackToDojo #CoderDojo #ScratchOn pic.twitter.com/1dEYhehKX0

— Nuala McHale (@NuliBouli) August 27, 2019