Reflections on Scratch Educator Meetup @ MIT: Saturday, December 8, 2012

Thanks to everyone who attended the final Scratch Educator Meetup of 2012!

Here is a recap and some reflections from the event:

Attendees
Below is a list of people who attended the meetup on Saturday:

• Derek Breen
• Vicki Gold
• Tom Kowalczyk
• Kathleen Loglisci
• Colin Meltzer
• Barbara Mikolajczak
• Rosemary Slattery
• Denise Stanley
• Karen Brennan
• Michelle Chung
• Jeff Hawson
• Tomoko Matsukawa

To connect with someone from the meetup, click on a name above and leave a message on their profile page.

Recap

• Meet up with Me: Celebrating CSEdWeek! - At the beginning of the meetup, attendees filled out a networking worksheet. To kick-off CSEdWeek taking place this week, we asked each person to share their thoughts on what students should learn about computing and computer science.
• Introductions - Karen facilitated introductions by having people share their names, familiarity with Scratch, and goals for the day.
• Breakout Sessions - Based on participants' goals, Karen organized three hands-on breakout sessions for the morning: Michelle facilitated a "Getting Started with Scratch" session with people who were new to Scratch and wanted an introduction to the program and resources, Colin is interested in using Scratch with the XBOX Kinect sensor and decided to work on building an interactive program with Jeff, and Karen organized a Scratch 2.0 breakout session to brainstorm new game activities for the Scratch curriculum guide.
  
• Show & Tell - Over a Chipotle lunch, we hosted a Show & Tell session for attendees to share some of their students' work. Barbara gave us an update on her new after-school Scratch Club, Rosemary shared projects from a recent Scratch workshop she hosted at a library in Peabody, MA, ScratchEd intern Tomoko described her research project and asked people to fill out a short survey about how they help students reflect on their creative processes, and Colin demonstrated the Scratch+Kinect project he designed with Jeff during the breakout sessions.
• Photos - Here are some photos from the meetup.

Do you have any reflections, questions, or suggestions about the meetup? Please share them as a comment below.

We hope that you'll join us at the next Scratch Educator Meetup on Saturday, January 12. Registration is available at http://2012-2013meetups.eventbrite.com.

Happy Holidays and see you next year!