Program for Snap!Con 2020
All events are currently displayed in PDT (UTC -7).
BOF (30 minutes) Lightning Talk (5 minutes) Poster / Demo (20 minutes)
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Kristen Reed, Paul Goldenberg, Kate Coleman, June Mark, Deborah Spencer, Bernat Romagosa
The Math+C project at Education Development Center (EDC) is developing a coherent integration of CS ideas and skills into elementary mathematics, using programming as a language to help children express and explore mathematical ideas. We start from the broad hypothesis that programming, used this way, changes how children learn mathematics; and that it helps develop and expose children's com...
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Akos Ledeczi, Corey Brady, Brian Broll
Blocks-based programming environments have proven effective for introducing novices to programming. These environments are generally characterized by both a low threshold and wide walls (i.e., they make it easy to get started and students can create projects on a wide range of topics). These wide walls can facilitate creativity and cultivate student interest in computer science, as they enab...
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Nizar Ayed
A SNAP! of MQTT
MQTT is a dedicated protocol for message queueing and is among the best to use with the IoT. Its light payload messaging makes an ideal feature to communicate with servers with less power and less bandwidth. It is also secure and error prone which make it enough robust for critical industrial applications and environments.
Why Snap!
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Matthias Kim
I would like to show how to utilize Snap!_ to prepare for learning Python:
We have created Python language blocks in Snap! so the Snap! code can be generated into Python code and the blocks in SNAP also feel already Pythonish. The aim is to provide early success and an understanding of the Python language in Snap! before touching a text editor and getting into the world of syntax and typing....
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Want to step out into the virtual "hallway"? Come, meet others in an informal setting...
Discuss on the Snap! Forum
Jens Mönig
The latest Snap! release is all about scaling up. We've redesigned Snap's architecture to support bigger projects that can do more in less time while retaining interactive liveliness. And we've also designed the blocks to be more expressive, so you can "think more" with fewer blocks. To accomplish this we've enhanced the domain of scalar functions to also operate on collections such as vecto...
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Glen Bull, James Rutter, Jo Watts
Computational Thinking – the process of designing a solution to a problem in a form that can be implemented by a computer – is rapidly being incorporated into school standards. The state of Virginia, for example, has adopted standards that require elementary teachers to incorporate computational thinking into their teaching. Many other states are adopting similar standards (Code.org, 2018). ...
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Jeff Kaufman
This workshop will explore the challenges and experiences bringing an Advanced Placement Computer Science curriculum using Snap! to schools comprised of economically disadvantaged high school students located in an inner New York City neighborhood. The College Board Computer Science Principles course was developed to bring college level computer science instruction to a broad and in...
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Xavier Pi, Bernat Romagosa
We present an MQTT library for Snap ! (https://github.com/pixavier/mqtt4snap) along with an example of two Snap ! instances communicating with each other.
MQTT (Message Queuing Telemetry Transport) is a standard and widely used publish/subscribe protocol for the Internet of Things that allows you to ...
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Jadga Hügle, Jens Mönig
In this talk, we show you how to analyze, transform, and generate multi-media content using a programming language rather than a word processor, photo editor, or music mixer.
The very same strategies, programming concepts, and notional models that are useful for hacking media are also useful for other programming tasks, and can even be directly applied to data sets from other sources...
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Michael Barden, Humberto Luiz Razente, Heather Flynn, Yasin Silva
The ability to retrieve data from a data store and perform core operations such as filtering, merging, and aggregating tasks, is becoming a critical skill in a data driven world where Data Science is becoming a fundamental interdisciplinary field.
In this presentation we will describe and show the key features of DBSnap, a web application to build database queries (based on relational algeb...
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Ken Kahn, Mary Fries, Andreas Gräfl, Tom Lauwers, Irene Ortega, Verena Konrad
Poster and Demo presenters will have a chance to give you a preview of their posters/demos.
Discuss on the Snap! Forum
Joek van Montfort
Turtlestitch is a Snap! modification that connects Turtle art with embroidery. It is a lovely way to materialize your coding efforts. As an example, I will show the joy I found in decoding the Rhythmical lines of Waclaw Szpakowski.
Discuss on the Snap! Forum
Wiebke Thumfart
Women are largely underrepresented in STEM professions because of the gender specification that is already occurring at school. This is particularly true in computer science, where approximately 18% of women work in the IT industry in the EU. To get young women enthusiastic about IT, impulses must be set at an early stage, to change women's self-perception and self-efficacy for IT content. A...
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Emily Thomforde
One simple trick to track any variable with live graphing! - Math: proportion, transformation, scale, translation - Science: analyzing & interpreting data - CS: data & analysis, variables Presentation link: bit.ly/snaptimeseries
Discuss on the Snap! Forum
Jeremy Millard
DiamondFire teaches coding concepts through a Minecraft multiplayer server. Using a drag-and-drop style coding system, students can create their own games directly within Minecraft. Students can collaborate and build games in real time, and they can also play each other's games together. DiamondFire achieves learning objectives using a unique, social environment and a game everyone loves!<...
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Stefano Federici
By using the BloP extension, I will show that non-high-level-programming-expert users of Snap! can build simple block languages that they can use to introduce their students to the core elements of a programming language such as sequence and looping.
Setting up a few new blocks with their syntax, creating auxiliary elements that can help design the new environment, hiding al...
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D.J. Servilla
Snap! inherited Scratch 1.4's help screens, which were static, bitmap images with poor support for translation. Last spring, I implemented a new documentation system which enables help screens to be easily created and translated with a markup language designed for annotating Snap! scripts. This talk will provide an overview of how the new help screen system can be used by S...
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Christiane Bauer
We talk a lot about machine learning and AI and how this works. I'm interested in the way humans learn, how every individual can be understood, and how every person can find ways to explore and reflect on her own best access to learning.
One aspect of Logo and Snap! today is to learn about learning, a thought and idea that resonates a lot with me and has inspired experimenti...
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Joe Garofalo, Gina Bull, Glen Bull
Kids and Cookies is an interactive game designed to teach fractions to young children. This game was designed by a mathematics educator (Joe Garofalo) and implemented in Snap!. The goal of the game is to share cookies fairly among friends. The game begins by inviting the player to choose up to six friends to share the cookies with (Figure 1).
Pam Amendola
Participants will learn how Snap! code can be used to program robots to emote and act out scenes of Shakespeare's Macbeth. The session facilitator will show participants how Snap! code was used in her ELA classroom as part of a language arts unit.
Pam Amendola is a British and American Literature teacher in Dawsonville, GA at Dawson County High School. She had her s...
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Dan Garcia
There's normally a reception after the first full day of any face-to-face conference, where attendees can stand around those tall tables with a plate full of food and meet one another. We will be using breakout rooms in the main plenary zoom room as an attempt to recreate the experience -- participants will be placed into rooms of 3 people to talk to one another for 10 minutes, then be shuff...
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Mary Fries, Brian Harvey
Join us for a hands-on overview of the 2020 Beauty and Joy of Computing (BJC) curriculum updates in alignment with the revised Advanced Placement Computer Science Principles (AP CSP) framework and according to teacher feedback. Snap! was created specifically to support the BJC curriculum, which was originally developed at UC, Berkeley and later adapted by Education Development Cente...
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Stefano Federici
Alternative block languages are created every day to introduce learners to computer programming by leveraging on their non-programming interests such as robotics, 3D printing, embroidery, arts. Those new programming environments are often extensions of general-purpose block languages such as Snap! or Scratch. Even if all the creators of new block languages want is often creating something ve...
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Servane Demol
Present a curriculum that covers a minimum of 10 hours of instruction to teach students in middle school or high school how to use Snap! and design thinking processes to build awesome games. People will have access to a free online curriculum and a printed version when attending the workshop. (https://www.codeforf...
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Alexandra Abramova
Due to the current global pandemic caused by the COVID-19 virus, Germany has introduced a nationwide school closure and therefore several weeks of home schooling. Teachers, students, and parents were faced with a new challenge of online teaching using exclusively digital media. This situation makes it possible to investigate how digital learning works under completely new conditions. The Sna...
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Want to step out into the virtual "hallway"? Come, meet others in an informal setting...
Sarah Chasins
A look at how block-based programming let us meet the needs of social scientists and other non-technical domain experts in the challenging domain of web automation programming. After two decades of end-user programming tools that didn't quite meet real users' web automation needs, we'll discuss the key insights and techniques that made our tool successful: (i) a usable program drafting tool...
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Bernat Romagosa
In this talk we will demo the latest developments in the MicroBlocks programming language, including new primitives to access the board's flash file system, network capabilities, list and string primitives, a garbage-collected memory, a new web-based version, a reworked UI and a new library system, among others.
MicroBlocks is a blocks based, live programming language that runs insid...
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Vesna Krnjic, Sarina Gursch
The Catrobat Embroidery Designer has a lot of possibilities for young developers and creative minds. With this stitching app, you can create your own designs and patterns, which can be stitched with an embroidery machine.
We will present opportunities and ways to teach students or interested users with some mathematical skills. First of all, we show how to use the Catrobat Embroidery Design...
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Dan Garcia
Having spent a year and a half teaching BJC and Snap! to middle school first-time-programmers, I was able to witness some errors that I'd not seen before. Students learning keep, for example, and still fuzzy about domain and range, were dragging the predicate into the wrong slot for keep. It dropped happily, but it made me wonder why it did -- keep ONLY works over lists, so why would Snap! a...
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Verena Konrad
Digitization is progressing faster than ever, and basic IT education is becoming increasingly important for the future job market. This increases the importance of computer science and the use of digital media in the classroom. But how can these findings be integrated into the school education of the future generation? Interdisciplinary computer science lessons offer one pos...
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Ken Kahn
We’ll demonstrate Snap! blocks for creating, training, and using deep neural networks. The focus will be upon the projects listed here: https://ecraft2learn.github.io/ai/#sample-programs. Examples of the range of projects that can be created with these blocks includes ones that predicts how one might rate the out...
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James Rutter, Glen Bull, Jo Watts
The Make to Learn consortium is a coalition anchored by the Make to Learn Laboratory at the University of Virginia. Other collaborators include Princeton University, Midlands Technical College, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education. The consortium has developed a series of Make to Learn Invention Kits that enable students to reconstruct...
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Jadga Hügle, Susan Ettenheim
Everyone talks about making data more tangible. How better to create a tangible experience than by generating embroidery designs and stitching them onto your favorite shirt or bag?
In this talk we share ideas on how to get data into Turtlestich by generating or importing it, how to analyze that data and how to stitch it later on.
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Mark Schoenfield, Sarah Burriss, Corey Brady, Brian Broll, Clifford Anderson
In this talk, we will present our ongoing work introducing computational thinking to humanists as part of the Computational Thinking and Learning Initiative (CTLI) at Vanderbilt University. Our approach was specifically tailored toward text analysis and exploring how quantitative approaches can complement existing qualitative techniques in literary scholarship. We found blocks-based programm...
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Andreas Gräfl
Microcontroller starter kit for Snap!/MircroBlocks IDE
Building your own projects with a microcontroller isn’t easy. There is a large variety of sensors and actuators to choose from. But not all of them work reliably in the Snap!/MircroBlocks IDE. In the past we’ve faced difficulties using some sensors and actuators in our academies.
So, the question is what sensors and actua...
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Sean Morris, Mark Miller, Efrain Lopez, Nicole Hutchins, Jessica Hexsel, Josh Paley
NOTE: Links to materials coming soon!
Riffing on an idea that Prof. Colleen Lewis has done at SIGCSE, we will see examples of what actual teachers view as their best lessons. Presenters will deliver lessons as they would in their classrooms (insofar as that is possible) and there would be time at the end of each presentation for questions.
The presenters are:...
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Stefano Federici
On March 2020 the Italian Minister for School (followed by other countries) decided not to reopen Italian schools for the school year. All remaining educational activities had to be carried out by means of Distance Education tools. But Italian School teachers had never been thoroughly taught on the usage of Distance Education tools and techniques. So, for the most part, Distance Education to...
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Gayathri Narasimham, Clifford Anderson
In this short talk, we present a case study of how faculty at Vanderbilt University adapted The Beauty and Joy of Computing curriculum into an introductory computing course for non-majors and potential majors at the School of Engineering. We share how the spirit and principles of the BJC [1] guided the developme...
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Tom Lauwers
The Finch Robot 2.0 is a new robot designed to support Computer Science education from kindergarten to college. Like the original Finch, Finch 2.0 can be programmed with Snap! on Windows, Macbooks, and Chromebooks. Unlike the original Finch, the new Finch connects via Bluetooth, an...
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Brian Harvey, Paul Goldenberg, June Mark, Mary Fries
This poster presents the design principles of the Beauty and Joy of Computing (BJC) Advanced Placement Computer Science Principles (AP CSP) course. Snap! was created specifically to support the BJC curriculum, which was originally developed at UC, Berkeley and later adapted by Education Development Center, Inc. into a high school AP CSP course. BJC covers the AP framework but also t...
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Akos Ledeczi, Corey Brady, Brian Broll
In this short talk, we present the results of a multi-disciplinary collaboration between earth scientists, education researchers and computer scientists, including undergraduate and graduate students and faculty. The goal of the project was to design a set of curricular components that teach about climate change and computational thinking in a synergistic manner. We utilized a Snap! extensi...
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Joey Knapp, Rachel Huang
Do you want help expanding your school or district's Computer Science offerings? Microsoft Philanthropies TEALS Program is a free program that is working to increase CS teaching capacity in high schools. Technology Education and Literacy in Schools (TEALS) partners classroom teachers with volunteers from the tech industry who can team teach with the teacher. The teacher has the opportunity t...
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Maxson Yang, Gurkaran Singh Goindi, Penguinlay, Benjamin Belfus, Shannon Hearn, Jonas Ong, Alyssa Sugarman, Bojin Yao, Eduardo Huerta, Irene Ortega, Dan Garcia, Qitian Liao
In STEM higher education, courses conduct both formative and summative assessments in a manner that thwarts mastery learning and magnifies equity gaps in student preparation. In short, this is “constant time, variable learning”—course pacing is the same for all students regardless of learning speed, all students receive a small number of “one-shot” summative assessments at the same time, and...
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Jens-Peter Knemeyer
Many recall the Scavenger Hunt from 2019 with great fondness, as it allowed us to explore Heidelberg (our host city), work in teams, and have fun. We're bringing it back this year with a virtual scavenger hunt, led by the same team that brought us such creative challenges last year.
Discuss on the Snap! Forum<...
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Snap! 6.0 includes hyperblocks, reporters that normally expect single numbers or words as input but can now also accept vectors (simple lists) or matrices (lists of simple lists), or even higher-dimensional arrays, and report similarly shaped results.
The idea behind this new feature is 58 years old. It comes from the book A Programming Language by Kenneth...
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Ken Kahn
In this workshop you’ll be given the opportunity to explore Snap! blocks for creating, training, and using deep neural networks. No prior experience with machine learning is required. It is best if participants have laptops with Chrome installed. The focus will be upon the resources in this guide: http...
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Corey Brady
Blocks-based programming is exciting for both students and teachers. But it can be daunting to manage a whole classroom working on different activities. How can you get students talking and sharing across projects?
This workshop introduces a simple tool--the Activity Gallery--that enables teachers to create and distribute “activity starters” to structure collaborative classroom work...
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Want to step out into the virtual "hallway"? Come, meet others in an informal setting...
Discuss on the Snap! Forum
YoungThinkers is a SAP Program that gets kids excited about programming! We'll have a one-hour period in the late California morning and the Europe evening so young learners can attend.
The session will be the Show and Tell of what happened during the first virtual and international Young Thinkers Learning festival which took place this week Monday to Wednesday as SnapCon2020 pre-event. You...
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Tiffany Barnes
Computing can amplify everything it means to be human — from intelligence to compassion, communication, understanding, and creativity – and even transform people and our society. Programming languages like Snap! and the creation of serious games highlight the importance of leveraging creativity to inspire the next wave of transformative innovation in computing. However, not everyone...
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Gurkaran Singh Goindi, Maxson Yang, Shannon Hearn, Penguinlay, Benjamin Belfus, Jonas Ong, Alyssa Sugarman, Irene Ortega, Bojin Yao, Eduardo Huerta, Dan Garcia, Qitian Liao
In STEM higher education, courses conduct both formative and summative assessments in a manner that thwarts mastery learning and magnifies equity gaps in student preparation. In short, this is “constant time, variable learning”—course pacing is the same for all students regardless of learning speed, all students receive a small number of “one-shot” summative assessments at the same time, and...
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Tilman Michaeli, Jadga Hügle
The possibilities of artificial intelligence and its influence on our everyday lives are expanding rapidly. To participate in an increasingly digital world and make informed decisions about AI and its impact on our society, everyone needs a basic understanding of AI. Only by understanding the underlying principles and ideas everyone is able to assess the possibilities and limits of AI and ac...
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Jeremy Millard
DiamondFire teaches coding concepts through a Minecraft multiplayer server. Using a drag-and-drop style coding system, students can create their own games directly within Minecraft. Students can collaborate and build games in real time, and they can also play each other's games together. DiamondFire achieves learning objectives using a unique, social environment and a game everyone loves!<...
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Jeremy Millard, Dan Garcia, Michael Ball
(from blockeley.com) "Blockeley is a virtual replica of the UC Berkeley campus in Minecraft. In May we hosted a virtual graduation for the UC Berkeley class of 2020."
Join us as UC Berkeley (and Minecraft fans) faculty Michael Ball and Dan Garcia give a virtual tour of campus, where SnapCon 2020 was to be held.
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Jadga Hügle
Join us for fun, social, virtual games to get to know each other...
Online game: http://playtaboo.com/
Clue cards have the clue word on the top of the card and the taboo words listed below the clue word. Clue-givers then start and keep the timer and must get their team to say the guess-word on the card withou...
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Shannon Hearn
Join us for fun, social, virtual games to get to know each other...
Online game: https://skribbl.io/
Rules: When its your turn to draw, you will have to choose a word from three options and visualize that word in 80 seconds, alternatively when somebody else is drawing you have to type your guess into the chat t...
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Jonas Ong
Join us for fun, social, virtual games to get to know each other...
From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codenames_(board_game)#Rules
"Codenames is a game of guessing which codenames (i.e., words) in a set are related to a hint-word given by another player.
<...view more
Maxson Yang
Join us for fun, social, virtual games to get to know each other...
Online game: https://www.horsepaste.com/
Rules from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scattergories#Gameplay
"One player rolls a 20-sided l...
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Dan Garcia
The Beauty and Joy of Computing is UC Berkeley's diversity-record-setting non-majors course that has achieved national recognition. It has been shared with over 800 teachers worldwide and has been endorsed by the College Board. Two years ago we started developing a Middle School version of the course, emphasizing functional programming, 2D and 3D graphics, student creativity, and engagement....
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Erin Whitaker, Tom Lauwers
Remote robots are robotics projects that can be accessed and programmed via the internet by anyone from anywhere. These robots use the NetsBlox platform, a multiplayer networking blocks programming environment that is derived from Snap!
This workshop h...
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Jens-Peter Knemeyer
One of the most important issues in many modern school curricula is the development of soft skills like teamwork, creativity, problem solving, self-organization and so on. On the other hand, also professional knowledge has to be acquired and methods have to be trained, which means for informatics training coding for instance.
In this workshop we show a possibility to combine both as...
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Mareen Grillenberger
Physical computing is an appealing topic for CS education (and probably many other subjects) from primary school onward. In many different contexts children and adolescents actively design and create their own interactive objects as tangible products of learning using methods and ideas of embedded systems design, programmable hardware and often block-based programming languages. It was shown...
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Want to step out into the virtual "hallway"? Come, meet others in an informal setting...
Discuss on the Snap! Forum
Eckart Modrow
The talk will show how independent work in programming courses can be enabled and encouraged. This is followed by examples from the lecture "Programming for Non Computer Scientists".
Discuss on the Snap! Forum
Ken Kahn
See BOF details on the Snap! Forum: https://forum.snap.berkeley.edu/t/ai-and-machine-learning-programming-in-snap/2659
Discuss on the Snap! Forum
Matthias Giger, Joek van Montfort
See BOF details on the Snap! Forum: - https://forum.snap.berkeley.edu/t/turtlestitch/2651 - https://forum.snap.berkeley.edu/t/generative-art-with-snap/2677
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Dan Garcia
See BOF details on the Snap! Forum: https://forum.snap.berkeley.edu/t/middle-school/2657
Discuss on the Snap! Forum
Hariprasath Venkatram
See BOF details on the Snap! Forum: https://forum.snap.berkeley.edu/t/cryptography-for-young-scientist-with-snap/2664
Discuss on the Snap! Forum
Joan Guillén, Joel Rosenberg, John Maloney, Kathy Giori, Bernat Romagosa
See BOF details on the Snap! Forum: https://forum.snap.berkeley.edu/t/microcontrollers-sensors-snap-and-the-physical-world/2653
Discuss on the Snap! Forum
Dan Garcia
See BOF details on the Snap! Forum: https://forum.snap.berkeley.edu/t/high-school/2675
Discuss on the Snap! Forum
Jens Mönig, Joan Guillén, Jadga Hügle, Michael Ball, Brian Harvey, Bernat Romagosa
The creators of Snap! close out Snap!Con with an interactive discussion on the future of Snap!.