Susan: I've been involved with online communities since the early 90s as the cybrarian for femina.com (the first searchable database for sites about, for and by women) then as part of Oprah's first online communities at the Oxygen network. I'm very interested in the screen, communication and creativity and imagination. My students have a bit of screen fatigue and they are starved to do things with their hands in the physical world. At the 2012 Scratch conference at MIT, they were thrilled to be part of the workshop given by Margaret Low and her students about Scratch and the physical world. I grew up making as my grandfather was a pattern cutter and my grandmother a milliner. We had a ham radio antennae in the backyard for my brother who was always building things with my Dad. This connects to my interest in teaching students to code but also to do it in the real world, making things and digital interaction as a creative outlet. I do believe more than ever that a physically developed human and a creative human, both in the analog and the digital world will help heal our world. Enough of my utopian ideas though!
Linda: I'm a CS student from Germany, a CoderDojo Mentor and a Scratch Team member. I've first been introduced to Scratch in 2011 and since then haven't been able to quit Scratching. The community as well enchanted me. I've been a Mentor on the Scratch website, an author of the German Scratch Wiki and finally, I've also become a Community Moderator with the Scratch Team. I've been in love with real-life Scratch Community gatherings ever since my first Scratch Conference at MIT two years ago. Last year I joined the Organizing Committee for the European Scratch Conference in Amsterdam, which is in fact where I met Susan and our collaboration started. I am really exited to be able to present this workshop with her today and I hope we'll all have much fun together.
Scratchers love to articulate where they got stuck and how they got unstuck on a project, but often that wonderful experience goes unshared and could really be helpful to someone else. We’re excited that Scratch's new project recording feature will allow users to visually share breakthroughs on our YouTube channel and connect users across shared interests. We encourage you to create your own ScratchCard, using our template and Scratch's project recording feature.
Information on how to create your own ScratchCard can be found at Create a ScratchCard.
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