English

Scratch Community Blocks: Supporting Children as Data Scientists

Human-Computer Interaction 2017-02-03 v2 Computers and Society Social and Information Networks

Abstract

In this paper, we present Scratch Community Blocks, a new system that enables children to programmatically access, analyze, and visualize data about their participation in Scratch, an online community for learning computer programming. At its core, our approach involves a shift in who analyzes data: from adult data scientists to young learners themselves. We first introduce the goals and design of the system and then demonstrate it by describing example projects that illustrate its functionality. Next, we show through a series of case studies how the system engages children in not only representing data and answering questions with data but also in self-reflection about their own learning and participation.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1702.00112,
  title  = {Scratch Community Blocks: Supporting Children as Data Scientists},
  author = {Sayamindu Dasgupta and Benjamin Mako Hill},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1702.00112},
  year   = {2017}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-22T18:06:04.543Z