We just wrapped up the UVa Saturday Enrichment Program sessions, and put the new Scratch 2.0 and App Inventor platforms through their paces! Scratch 2.0's social media angle and App Inventor's Scratch and mobile device compatibility took collaborative learning to an exciting level as I watched kids create their own Scratch sharing studios and collect followers within the class, with little prompting from me ;) We covered some advanced topics in the last class, including how to define custom event handlers to make a multi-level game. Check out this video for details. Also, consider setting up an account to take this advanced Scratch online class created by Harvard; the actual session is already over, but the archived video lessons are still available and very helpful.

Finally, since I like to tie teaching programming to social good, take a look at this article about how a game development company allows gainful employment in parts of the world otherwise gutted by war and catastrophe.