Supporting the World’s Largest Coding Platform for Kids
At the Scratch Foundation, our mission is clear — to ensure that Scratch is available for free, for everyone, so that kids around the world can express their creativity through coding. As champions of the Scratch project, we also share stories of collaboration, innovation, and learning within the Scratch community.
During 2016, we made great progress bringing creative coding to millions of new young people globally. I’m so pleased to share these reflections with you.
Millions of newcomers joined Scratch.
Participation in the Scratch online community skyrocketed in 2016, with nearly 22,000 new members joining the site every day. During CSEdWeek (December 5–11) alone, more than 5.4 million people visited the site and used Scratch tutorials to animate their name, make music, and make things fly.
Scratchers helped each other and inspired others.
Scratch is a platform, and it’s a community. Every day, Scratchers shared and remixed tens of thousands of projects (in more than 50 languages), and added 100,000 new comments.
Kids told us they felt more connected and inspired when they participated in the community. Said one Scratcher: “I shared my first project, I got instant feedback, and I knew I needed to keep going and keep coding.”
Young people used Scratch to develop their voices.
Scratch is designed to provide all kids, from all backgrounds, with opportunities to express themselves creatively with new technologies. This year, we saw wonderful examples of community collaboration,
personal expression,
graphic design,
…and of course, humor.
Scratch gatherings took place around the world.
While the online community is central to Scratch (and home to nearly 100M comments!), people found many ways to connect in 2016. In May, 659 Scratch Day events were organized in 74 countries, and in August more than 400 people gathered at the MIT Media Lab for the annual Scratch Conference. Educators also forged new learning communities by participating in ScratchEd Meetups across the US.
Creative coding flourished both in and out of school.
From classrooms and coding clubs to international initiatives spanning Africa and Europe, Scratch was the go-to platform that many organizations used to help kids learn to code. Throughout the year, young people attended workshops at Black Girls Code, Girls Who Code, Coder Dojo, Google CS First and many others, and shared thousands of creative projects.
What’s more, young children ages 5–7 and their families told more than 100,000 interactive stories per week using the free ScratchJr app, which is now available in seven different languages.
See you next year and Scratch on!
Thank you! This has been an incredible year for Scratch, made possible by the many talented members of the Scratch Team, the Scratch Foundation, volunteers, mentors, educators, and donors.
See you next year, as we gear up for the 10th anniversary of Scratch, and thank you for making Scratch the world’s largest and most creative coding platform for kids.
Lisa O’Brien
Scratch Foundation Executive Director
Scratch is the world’s largest coding platform for children, with more than 100M unique visitors per year. If you would like to support the ongoing development and innovation of the Scratch project and help us reach more young people, please consider making a donation to the Scratch Foundation.
