The first European Scratch conference took place in Barcelona at the end of July (27-29 July) bringing together educators, researchers and developers from the worldwide Scratch community to discuss and share experiences and knowledge. Margaret Low, Principal Teaching Fellow at WMG, has been part of the Organising Committee and Programme Committee for the conference and a number of staff and students from the University of Warwick led sessions across the days.

At the European conference, students from the University of Warwick, undertook a live demonstration of the power of Scratch. Andrew Sula, Sam Edwards and Tom Preece, student leaders of the University of Warwick’s Technology Volunteers project (part of Warwick Volunteers), built a dance mat and developed a game, all within five minutes, live on stage. Dr Claire Rocks from Computer Science ran a session about 'The Robot Garden', a workshop where participants can program their own robot gardeners.

The aim of sessions like this was to show the creative and fun possibilities available through Scratch and to encourage participants to develop and implement their own ideas. Other practical demonstrations contributed by Warwick people included the Tiltometer, a water-based joystick made from a plastic bottle and the Box It! – a reaction-based game made from a cardboard box.

Scratch is a programming language and online community, developed at MIT’s Media Lab, where users can create their own interactive stories, games and animations and share them with others around the world. The aim of the project is to encourage young people to think creatively, reason systematically and work collaboratively.

Margaret Low said “Being part of the conference has been a great experience and the creativity and diversity of the sessions over the three days has been breathtaking. The conference brought together 200 attendees from all over the world and many useful contacts have been made as a result.”

Some worksheets developed for the conference are available to download from the WMG website.