About a Meetup

Starting in December 2010, we have been hosting monthly Scratch Educator Meetups at the MIT Media Lab. The three-hour, BYOL (Bring Your Own Laptop) meetups were created as a means of supporting local educators to gather informally, and to share and learn more about Scratch.
 

We think that the most interesting and valuable experiences take place when the learning environment is collaboratively constructed, with participants taking an active role in their learning. We're constantly experimenting with the format, but some of the activities/structures we've tried out together are:

• Name-Know-Want: an introductory activity to help people make connections with each other based on goals and experience
• Getting to Know Scratch: for those just getting started with Scratch, a session that explores the core ideas behind Scratch and hands-on time with designing a Scratch project
• Self-Organized Sessions: just-in-time working groups based on common interests and goals (e.g. developing debugging strategies, experimenting with PicoBoards)
• Show & Tell: educators share student projects, lesson plans, or other teaching strategies with the rest of the group
• Reflections: shared reflections on the session and discussion of next steps
   

Meetups take place on the 3rd Saturday of each month. You can find out more information about the next meetup on the Scratch events page.