Ahead of Scratch Day, observed globally on May 12, the Seprod Foundation on Thursday hosted the first of five free training workshops to expose teachers across the island to the concepts of Scratch — a free coding platform and online community for kids.

Over 30 teachers from a wide cross section of early childhood institutions, primary and high schools, tertiary institutions, and government agencies attended.

“The teachers were extremely excited to learn about Scratch and particularly loved that fact that it was free and it worked offline. Additionally, they were further motivated to know that all the resources we used in their activities were freely available online, along with a vibrant Scratch community of educators worldwide. The teachers left the workshop feeling equipped to do activities with their students for Scratch Day, whether as using a single computer, small groups, or a computer lab,” said founder of Halls of Learning and workshop facilitator Marvin Hall.

Describing Scratch, Hall said: “Scratch is the forerunner of many of the popular apps promising to teach young children how to code, and remains the premier platform for introducing creative computing to them. Scratch works both offline and online and has millions of users worldwide. Scratch enables children to create games, animations, and interactive stories in fun, playful exploration.”

Scratch is a project of the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab.

“Students can use Scratch to code their own interactive stories, animations, and games,” said Mitch Resnick, director of the lab. “In the process, they learn to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively — essential skills for everyone in today’s society.”

This is its 10th anniversary but it is the first time that Jamaica will be participating. The event will be held at the regional headquarters at the University of the West Indies, Mona, and is expected to be attended by about 300 students.

After Thursday’s workshop, Marvia Thomas from Creative Kids Learning Academy revealed that technology has changed the way in which she teaches, as it has broadened her horizon and has allowed her students to learn better problem-solving skills.

Seprod’s other workshops will be held on April 29 & 30 and May 6 & 7 at General Accident, 58 HWT Road, Kingston 10. As part of their registration, teachers can go to the Scratch website

day.scratch.mit.edu/ and create a username to become part of the community and get access to online resources.

“Seprod Foundation is excited to host the first ever Scratch Day in Jamaica as part of its mandate to invest in the human capital of Jamaica, to not only inspire more careers in science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics, but also equip our country for a more rewarding future,” the workshop hosts said in a statement to the media.

“This latest initiative by the Seprod Foundation further advances it objectives of exposing a greater number of Jamaican children to the world of coding. It is also in keeping with the belief of Melanie Subratie, chairperson of the Seprod Foundation, that Jamaicans are a creative and entrepreneurial people who could be the creators of technology and not just consumers of it,” Seprod added.

Registration for the training workshop can be done at: hallsoflearning.typeform.com/to/QiawYJ

Sperod Foundation has another project that focuses on computer programming. It is called Jamaican Girls Coding and Hour of Code Coding Gallery.