The results of the year

The last days of December is the time to sum up the results of the year that is now ending, and to plan the future. 2017 was rich in different big and small events: we held various competitions, tens of workshops and trainings, we launched the first distance course in Scratch, we held interesting meetings with foreign colleagues and so on.
But no matter how difficult it is, we can always define the most important events.

We will remember the year 2017 by:

Development of an online basis of educational materials on Scratch

The determinative event for the project “Programming is the Second Literacy” is the development of an online basis of educational materials (lesson plans of extracurricular studies, presentations for lessons, learning projects, pick-up materials) for holding extracurricular studies within the learning programs "Creative activity in Scratch programming environment" (2-4 forms) and "Creation of computer games in the visual programming language Scratch " (5-6 forms). Within the republican innovation project ”Organization of schoolchildren extracurricular project activity using Scratch programming environment “ 48 innovative teachers developed more than 3500 lesson plans of facultative studies.

During summer vacations educators of the HTP Educational Center together with experienced teachers selected the best educational materials for Scratch methodical database. Now these materials are available for all the teachers who teach Scratch within extracurricular lessons on programming in Belarus.

Mitchel Resnick: "I was excited to learn about your creative use of Scratch in Belarus"

The delegation of Belarusian teachers took part in the international conference "Scratch Conference 2017 in Budapest" and met with Professor Mitchel Resnik, LEGO Papert Professor of Learning Research, Director of the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab. During the meeting with teachers he highly valued the work of Belarusian teachers – Scratch community members.

"To the teachers of Belarus. At the Scratch conference in Budapest, I was excited to learn about your creative use of Scratch in Belarus. Thank you for helping to introduce the students of Belarus to the creative possibilities of coding with Scratch," wrote Mitchel Resnick.

Mitchel Resnick is going to visit Belarus and take part in Scratch Conference in Minsk, in May.

Scratch strides along the country

Our project became very popular in 2017.

5,000 students of grades 3-6 in all regions of Belarus are studying Scratch today.

In September-December 2017, about 300 primary school and informatics teachers joined the project. Many of them successfully passed the online-course "Introduction to programming in Scratch". This course was supported by HTP.

During the autumn break, 116 teachers who have started teaching Scratch this year participated in free training programs in Minsk, Mogilev, Novopolotsk, and Grodno, organized by Education Center of HTP.

13 schools in small Belarusian towns received 135 desk- and laptops on the eve of New Year to have an opportunity to conduct classes in Scratch.

In January 2018, it is planned to launch elective classes in Scratch for second-grade students of Belarusian schools within the Creative Activity in Scratch syllabus.