We’ve been waiting several years for an update to Scratch, and this is the big one we’ve been hoping for! Scratch 1.4 was released in the mid-2009 and Scratch 2.0 will go live May 9, 2013. There are many reasons to be excited about this update: You can program directly in your web browser without requiring a download. This might not seem like a big deal, but allows for students to access their projects from any computer. It also means educators [...]

I have heard the following question many times in the last month – will Breakout Mentors have a summer camp? Unfortunately the answer is no, we will not be offering any summer camps this year. Considering so many parents are looking for this format, why isn’t Breakout Mentors going to have one? The focus of Breakout Mentors is to provide a depth in kids computer programming education that isn’t available anywhere else. We strive to provide curious students the opportunity to [...]

Hack the Future is headed back to the Peninsula after holding their last couple events in San Jose. Come Saturday April 20th at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View for a full day of kids building with technology! There are many different stations set up which kids 5th through 12th grade can explore at their own pace. The diversity of the stations is impressive – various types of computer programming, electronics with soldering and circuits, and design fundamentals. Hack the [...]

Tynker is a new kids programming environment that is currently in a limited release. Their team is coming to the Silicon Valley Coder Dojo to lead the April sessions – sign up for the waitlist here to be alerted when more tickets are available. I have been using Tynker with a couple Breakout Mentors students and believe it’s going to be extremely successful. I’m not at liberty to share details, but here is what they say on their website: Tynker is [...]

The drag-and-drop programming environment Scratch can look like a children’s toy – it features little cartoon characters controlled by stacking blocks together. Yet it teaches many important programming concept like loops, conditionals, and variables (which we’ve written about before). We recommend our younger students to start with Scratch – they can continue with it to make more and more advanced projects rather than rushing on to a more traditional language like Java. It can be difficult to communicate the amount of [...]

In the past we’ve touched on the trendy buzz for “learning to code” and how people as diverse as Michael Bloomberg and will-i-am have jumped on the bandwagon. If you have people that are wildly successful in other disciplines (like business, politics, and music) that are spending their valuable time learning to program, it begs the question, should everyone learn to code? Ben Werdmuller had a great answer to this question on Quora that I’d like to share with you:   [...]

Berkeley is a first year PhD student at Stanford and works with some of Breakout Mentors’ most advanced students. With his extensive experience he is perfectly suited for introducing computer science topics to students that have been quickly advancing their programming expertise. For example, one middle school student he mentors is creating his own programming language! Let’s hear more from Berkeley: When did you start programming? In second grade I was curious to know how computer software worked, and got started [...]

This week Code.org officially launched with a great video by Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and more. The video covers how they personally got started programming, why it’s important, and where it can take you. Watch the whole inspirational video (click here if reading in email): While I might have taken will.i.am out of the video and cut the minute that felt like recruiting for startups, I think it is extremely well done and an important message. One of the most powerful [...]

Silicon Valley Coder Dojo tickets go almost as fast as Taylor Swift’s. I’ve stopped sharing upcoming events with Breakout Mentors email subscribers because of mounting frustrations of never being able to obtain a spot. Today I bring you some good news – there are still tickets available for this Saturday’s event. It is a kids hackathon using the Khan Academy JavaScript platform – no experience is required and it is a great opportunity for students new to programming. The students will [...]

Kevin is a Stanford sophomore studying Computer Science and a Bay Area native. Like many of our mentors, he started programming in high school and enjoyed it so much he decided to keep with the subject through college. With Breakout Mentors he weekly guides two middle-school students through the fun process of learning to program in Java. Let’s hear more from Kevin: When did you start programming? I started programming during my junior year of high school, when I took my [...]