Scratch Conference 2015 Amsterdam

The 2015 Scratch Conference took place in Amsterdam from the 12th to 15th August 2015. Teachers, researchers, developers and other members of the worldwide Scratch community gathered to celebrate and share the creative possibilities of Scratch. The conference theme was Creative Communities. Communities inspire creativity, they enable people to share ideas, skills and discoveries.

Before the official start of the conference there were two masterclasses: Beetleblocks with Eric Rosenbaum and TurtleStitch with Andrea Mayr In Amsterdam Central Library (OBA) the children of Amsterdam were invited to take part in 10 workshops, run by conference participants.

Keynotes and some sessions were recorded and links are given below. Link to the full conference programme.

12th August. Conference Opening Party

• Ubi di Feo: From 0 to C is a series of workshops that aim at teaching programming using a more creative, human approach.
• Hans de Zwart: Don’t run away from this, Dude! Goddamnit, this affects all of us! Our basic freedoms! — Fighting for digital rights at BitsOfFreedom.
• Cynthia Solomon: Together with Seymour Papert and Wally Feurzeig she invented Logo, the first computer language for children. That was in the sixties. She shared some of what happened after that.

13th August. Day 1 (Visual Notes)

• Keynotes by Mitchel Resnick, Professor at the MIT Media Lab and Beat Döbeli Honegger, Professor at the Schwyz University of Teacher Education in Switzerland (PHSZ) Video
• Ignites 1 (video)
• Ignites 2 (video)
• Ignites 3 (video)
• Talks by Stephen Howell Extending Scratch into the real world and Samir Saidani European Erasmus+ Program Training on Scratch (video)

14th August: Day 2 (visual notes)

• Keynotes by Linda Liukas (Hello Ruby, Rails Girls FI) and Michelle Thorne (Webmaker, Mozfest, UK) (video)
• Ignites 4 (video)
• Ignites 5 (video)
• Talk: The Beauty and Joy of Computing, Brian Harvey, Dan Garcia, Jens Moenig, Michael Ball (video)

15th August: Day 3 (visual notes)

• Keynotes by Audrey Watters (Hack Education, Modern Learners US) and Eric Rosenbaum (MakeyMakey, MelodyMorph, BeetleBlocks US
• Final Plenary Session Interviewing members of the Scratch Community Connor Hudson, Linday Fernsell,Joren Lauwers by Ricarose Roque, Eric Schilling (MIT Media Lab US).
• Mitch Resnick gave the closing address finishing with all attendees singing I'd like to teach the world to code (Scratch Project) (Agnese's video)

The following sessions were contributed by participants from the UK:

• Creative Computer Science, Digital Data Driven Dance: Genevieve Smith-Nunes, Ready Salted Code
• NextGen Scratch Wizkids: Arteesha Bosamia, Stephen Pithouse, Robert Sandford, Thomas Preece, Andrew Sula, Technology Volunteers, University of Warwick
• A New Subject in a New Curriculum: Exemplifying Computing Science in Scottish Schools using Scratch Jeremy Scott, Royal Society of Edinburgh & George Heriot’s School
• Sniff - writing Scratch in text and creating IoT devices, Ian Stephenson, Tom Stacey, Bournemouth University (Ian Stephenson Blog)
• Serious Science with Silly Sensors: Margaret Low, Andrew Sula, Arteesha Bosamia, Marie Low, Robert Sandford, Stephen Pithouse, Tom Preece, Robert Low, Technology Volunteers, University of Warwick.
• From traffic lights to parent detectors: physical computing with Scratch and the Raspberry Pi: Clive Beale, Raspberry Pi Foundation
• Moving from Paper to Scratch to Python: David Ames, Edge Hill University/Computing At School
• Teaching debugging in Scratch: Miles Berry, University of Roehampton
• Round the Circuit - using unconventional methods to control Scratch: Drew Buddie & Sinead Moxham, Royal Masonic School/Naace)
• Ten Different Ways to Teach Algorithms: Drew Buddie, Royal Masonic School & Naace
• Scratch, away from the computer screen: Stephen Pithouse, Technology Volunteers, University of Warwick
• Interactive Computer Science Learning Tools for Adults: Arteesha Bosamia, University of Warwick
• Programming minecraft on the raspberry pi: Sarah Zalman
• A bear called Babbage: the story of the Raspberry Pi community: Clive Beale, Raspberry Pi Foundation
• Every evening Drew Buddie (RMS/Naace) provided evening entertainment during the conference running teachmeets and games