Scratch European Conference
Scratch is a platform developed by a team of engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for children (and adults) who want to learn to program. The object-oriented environment allows to do this without using text, the children just need to move blocks similar to Lego bricks. The simple and intuitive language found its admirers around the world very quickly.
This year marks the 10th anniversary of Scratch, and the Scratch Community arranged a number of international conferences in France, Costa Rica, Chile, Brazil, China, and even Hungary, to coincide with the anniversary. The conference in Budapest was organized by EPAM systems, a resident of high technologies park that launched a global program aimed at teaching children the basis of Scratch programming in 2015.
Scratch teachers from all over the world gathered at the conference to share their teaching experience and the most effective methods. Teachers Elena Kemstach (Novopolotsk Gymnasium No. 1), Olga Murina (Grodno Gymnasium No. 37), and Lydia Romanchuk (Glubokoe High School) represented Belarus in Budapest.
At the meeting with Professor Mitchel Reznik, the leader of the Lifelong Kindergarten group that created Scratch, Belarusian teachers told him about the development of the educational project implemented in Belarus jointly by the High Technologies Park and the Ministry of Education and aimed at teaching Scratch programming skills to pupils of 2-6 classes. The professor was impressed. He thanked the Belarusian teachers for the creative use of Scratch.
Links: