Leading the Creative Computing Revolution with Shawna Young and Mitchel Resnick of the Scratch Foundation

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In this episode, we speak to Shawna Young and Mitchel Resnick of the Scratch Foundation, which runs the largest creative computing community in the world around the Scratch programming language.

Recommended Resources:

Mitch Resnick and Ken Robinson, Lifelong Kindergarten
2021 Scratch Foundation Annual Report

Shawna Young is the Executive Director of the Scratch Foundation. 

Before coming to Scratch, Young led the Duke University Talent Identification Program (Duke TIP), one of the largest academic talent searches, with over 450,000 K-12 students and over 3 million alumni. She also spearheaded the expansion of the Office of Engineering Outreach Programs (OEOP) at MIT, serving as the Executive Director for eight years.  The OEOP provides rigorous educational opportunities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) to K-12 students from primarily underrepresented and underserved backgrounds. Young started her career as a public high school science teacher in North Carolina, then working as a curriculum developer at the Educational Development Center.

Mitchel Resnick is the LEGO Papert Professor of Learning Research and Director of the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab, which developed the Scratch programming software and online community, the world's leading coding platform for kids. 

His group has also collaborated for many years with the LEGO Company and the LEGO Foundation on the development of new educational ideas and products, including LEGO Mindstorms and LEGO WeDo robotics kits. Resnick co-founded the Computer Clubhouse project, an international network of 100 after-school learning centers, where youth from low-income communities learn to express themselves creatively with new technologies.