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 [...]

Ed is one of Breakout Mentors’ excellent programming mentors that works 1-on-1 with students. He has an impressive computer science background, graduating from Stanford in 2010 with a masters in Computer Science (focus on artificial intelligence), interning at Facebook, and now is in a leadership role at personalized audio startup Stitcher. When working with kids, interpersonal skills are just as important as technical knowledge, and Ed excels in this area as well. Let’s get to know him! When did you start [...]

Minecraft is the game everyone is playing these days. It’s really impressive how such a simple game, with so few rules, has gathered such a massive following. There are 40 million registered players, with more joining every day. Many of these players are kids – nearly every student Breakout Mentors works with plays the game! For those unfamiliar with Minecraft, here is a 1 minute trailer that is sure to pique your interest: [if you're reading in email, click here to [...]

The first Breakout Mentors game design contest has come to a close. Thanks to everyone who submitted a project, they were all very impressive and came from a wide range of sports – beach volleyball, shooting, track and field, and weightlifting! You can find all the games here. Scratch games can be played online, but also downloaded to see how it was made. Check out the complexity of the logic in each game to see just how advanced these young students [...]

Have you been watching hours of the Summer Olympics in London? If you’ve been glued to the TV like the rest of the world, it’s time to put that inspiration to use by creating a Scratch game based on an Olympic sport! It can be a soaring gymnasts on the uneven bars, a swimming relay race, perfectly synchronized divers, jumping equestrian horses, the triple jump, or any event you like! Create your game by the end of the Olympics, Sunday the [...]

Knowing how to program opens up a world of possibilities. But sometimes these possibilities seem abstract. Of course you can use your experience to land an exciting internship, get into an excellent college, or build your own product – but what does success look like? What exactly is possible for a teenager that knows how to code? The Teens in Tech Conference will show you exactly what is possible. On August 9th in Palo Alto over a dozen teenagers will present [...]

A Fun Intro to the Scratch Programming Environment We are excited to announce a free Breakout Mentors event to provide 4th to 7th graders their first taste of the Scratch programming environment! If you live in the Bay Area, join us on Tuesday May 15 in Mountain View for a fun introduction to computer programming. For more details and to register for the event, please head to our Eventbrite page. Photo: julian

The webinar has passed. To be alerted of upcoming Breakout Mentors events, please join our mailing list. Gaining admittance to the best colleges today is incredibly competitive. Harvard accepts a paltry 5.6% of applicants while Stanford is at a meager 7.1%. You’ve probably heard that these schools could accept only valedictorians or perfect SAT scores if they wanted. But you know all this. You know that you should be well rounded and differentiate yourself on your applications. Only … do you [...]

Last weekend at Stanford 100 young students came together on a blazingly hot day to code. I wanted to post a brief recap to get you excited about joining in on the fun for future Hack the Future events. There were approximately 8 different stations setup with different activities for the students to try. Each student was free to set their own schedule for the day – they could go to whatever station they were interested in, stay as long or [...]

Hack the Future puts on hackathons just for kids in 5th to 12th grade. Did the word hackathon just zoom past your head? Hack meaning to code, tinker, program. -athon, same suffix as marathon, meaning its an all day event with plenty of time to create something awesome! This weekend’s event at Stanford is the fourth event Hack the Future has put on just for kids in the Bay Area. The best part? No experience necessary! A student can come in [...]