Podcasts

Following Mitch's presentation on Tuesday 1st May 2012 at the County Library, a round table discussion took place on Scratch, its future and its use across all the education sectors in Ireland. Along with members of the audience the participants included:

Mitch Resnick is LEGO Papert Professor of Learning Research and head of the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab. He is interested in exploring how new technologies can engage people in creative learning experiences. Resnick's research group developed the "programmable brick" technology that inspired the LEGO Mindstorms robotics kit. He co-founded the Computer Clubhouse project, a worldwide network of after-school centers where youth from low-income communities learn to express themselves creatively with new technologies. Resnick's group also developed Scratch, an online community where children program and share interactive stories, games, and animations.

Amos Blanton
Scratch Community Coordinator, MIT.

Champika Fernanda
Lead developer of the Scratch 2.0 website, MIT.

Clare McInerney is the Education and Outreach Officer at Lero – the Irish Software Engineering Research Centre, based at the University of Limerick. One of the goals of the outreach programme is to introduce programming into schools and to provide support for teachers and students. The scratch.ie website hosts free teaching resources for teachers and students. To encourage interest in Scratch we also run an annual Irish Scratch competition.

Stephen Howell
Stephen Howell is a Computer Science lecturer in the Department of Computing in IT Tallaght having formerly been a software engineer for IBM. He has research interests in the development of psychometric educational games. Stephen has used Scratch as a tool for evangelising computational thinking over the past five years. He recently developed free software linking Scratch to Microsoft’s Kinect allowing for great interactivity in Scratch projects. The software is used in schools and universities internationally. Stephen has been an invited speaker and presented at CESI 2012, Carnegie Mellon Art & Code Conference 2011, Scratch@MIT 2012 and Scratch Day Espana, Madrid 2011.

Barry Feeney
Barry Feeney is Head of Computing at ITT, Dublin in Tallaght.

Author of amongst other titles, "On Canaan's Side", "The Secret Scripture" and "A Long Long Way" in conversation with Dermot Bolger,

Claire Keegan, author of "Antarctica" "Walk the Blue Fields" and "Foster" at Readers' Day 2011

Author of "The Pope Children", "In Search of the Pope's Children" and "Follow the Money" in conversation with Dermot Bolger

Eoin McNamee reads from his novel, "Blue Tango" accompanied by Keith Donald on saxaphone
Readers' Day 2011