ScratchEd Weekly Roundup | 12/17/11 - 12/23/11

The weekly roundup is where the ScratchEd Team shares some of the major -- as well as some of the overlooked -- news, stories, and events related to Scratch that took place throughout the week.

ScratchEd Weekly Roundup
12/17/11 - 12/23/11

• ScratchEd has a new look! Find out about all the changes and new features included in the redesign in this video tutorial. - http://scratched.media.mit.edu/stories/new-features-scratched-website-relaunch

• Did you celebrate CSEdWeek (December 4-10, 2011) this month? ScratchEd joined the festivities by featuring stories of educators doing inspirational work with Scratch. - http://scratched.media.mit.edu/search/node/csed%20week%202011

• Brooklyn Collegiate celebrated Scratch Day early this year, with an event in New York on Saturday, December 11. You can watch all the highlights from the day in this video. - http://scratch.wiki.packer.edu/

• Watch as broccoli turns into a sweet surprise in this fun video from Kazuhiro Abe that demontrates a magic wand project using Scratch with the LEGO WeDo tilt sensor. - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PDK9bCGv6Y&feature=share

• This beautiful image captures two young Japanese Scratchers introducing Scratch to their great-grandmother and grandmother. It's inter-generational Scratching at its finest! - https://twitter.com/#!/abee2/statuses/143616797181087745

• Lero, the Irish Software Engineering Research Centre, just launched their annual Scratch competition this month. You can find more information about the competition or download their Scratch lesson plans online. - http://www.scratch.ie/home

• This week, Fractus Learning featured Scratch as #1 of seven websites that "focus on programming for kids and will encourage, nurture and ignite the coding spark for your students." - http://www.fractuslearning.com/2011/12/14/programming-for-kids/

• Marisa Conde, a professor at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, posted this Scribd presentation to help Spanish-speaking educators get started with Scratch.

• Using this Scratch snowflake designer, Ingrid Gustafson developed a lesson plan about symmetry for 1st and 2nd graders that was both creative and festive. - http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/chalkmarrow/63661

• Happy Holidays! Check out this gallery of holiday-themed Scratch projects from sixth graders in Spain. - http://scratch.mit.edu/galleries/view/147593

These are just a few things that we found. Do you have news from the week that you'd like to share? Please post it as a comment below.