Wow - did you know that since Scratch 2.0's release last March, almost a year ago, users created and shared over 4.5 million projects (4, 655, 155 to be exact). That is really incredible and what I really like about this new version; it's hugely collaborative and there's lots of fresh material added every day to give you new ideas about how to build your own project. Remember, if you want to see other's work outside of a studio to which you are a curator, go to "Explore" once you are logged on to your Scratch 2.0 account and you'll get a bunch of different ways to search for the type of project you want to learn more about. Or, you can just click on the ones featured that show up on the Explore page. And, you can save a project you want to build onto by opening it, clicking on "see inside", then clicking on the "remix" button (which acts as "save as"). This will add this project to your "my stuff" folder, naming it <the name of the project>copy. And, then you are ready to make it your own. Things to keep in mind when copying other's projects from the Scratch site:

1.Sometimes projects, especially the really slick looking ones, were not actually programmed using Scratch, but on another platform using Scratch's language, "Squeak". This means, that the author may use programming options that you cannot replicate within Scratch itself. So, don't stress if your re-mix doesn't exactly work when you try to make it your own. Just use what you can and learn from it.

2.Not all projects shared actually work or are complete. Anyone can share a project; there are moderators for content, but not ones that test functionality. So, it's possible you might find a project that looks good, but doesn't really work. Make sure you test a project before you "remix" so you don't copy over a broken project.

3.When you "share" a project, you can also "unshare" it at any time. So, a project you might find one day, can be "gone" the next, so if you find a project you like, but don't have time to work on it right away, go ahead and "remix" it for later. If you wait and try to find it another day, it might not be available.

So, the good news, is Scratch 2.0 is popular. But, MIT is still working on fine tuning their server capacity to handle all this traffic on the site, and unfortunately, they still have some improvements to make. They updated their servers 10-Jan-14, but the upgrade didn't quite work as they expected, and, according to feedback on the Scratch wiki, the site's performance actually has worsened. We've continued to find this in our Saturday EP sessions, where at times, you'll get server errors when you try to log in, an account will freeze, and sprites totally disappear from the editor view once added to a project. Fortunately, if needed, you can work in Scratch 1.4 and upload work from that platform into a Scratch 2.0 account (but, remember, you can't open a file created in 2.0 and work on it in 1.4). This week, I did resort to this strategy for a couple of kids frustrated by 2.0 performance. So, keep Scratch 1.4 handy when teaching; you can still download it from the Scratch site.

And, check out this latest class video that reviews how to add timers to your Scratch project (works for either 1.4 or 2.0 version).