Pocket Code

Introduction

Pocket Code, also called Catroid is a mobile visual programming microworld developed by the Catrobat project. “The free open source non-profit project Catrobat allows users to create and publish their own apps using only their smartphones. Initiated in 2010, with first public versionsof our free appssince 2014 and47releases of the main coding app as of July 2018, Catrobatcurrently has more than 700,000 users from180 countries,is available in 50+ languages,and has been developed so far by almost1,000 volunteers from around the world(“the world”).Catrobatis strongly inspired by Scratchand indeed allows to import most Scratch projects, thus giving access to more than 30million projects on our users’ phones as of July 2018.” (Rockbottom, the world, the sky: Catrobat, an extremely large-scaleandlong-term visual coding project relying purely on smartphones), retrieved Jan 28, 2019.

See also:

• Scratch

Embroidery module

According to Luhana et al. (2018), as of July 2018 an embroidery module is under development. “One new feature which is currently under development is an extension to program embroidery machines. Once available, self-created patterns and designs can be stitched on t-shirts, pants, or even bags or shoes. With Pocket Code, the embroidery machines will be programmable, similar to the existing Turtlestitch project, which realizes this concept on a PC (while with Pocket Code only a smartphone is needed). As a result, teenagers have something they can be proud of, something they can wear, and they can show to others. This feature has proven to be especially engaging for female teenagers and shows them new ways of expressing themselves creatively through coding”.

“Project Code’n’Stitch (Sepember 2018 – August 2020). In September 2018 a new project funded by FEMtech (FFG) started. To make Pocket Code more interesting and attractive for our target group of young women between 12 and 15 years old, we will extend the app with the option to program embroidery machines. In this way, self-created patterns and designs can be stitched on t-shirts, pants or even bags. The project will be realized together with “bits4kids” and the Styrian fashion shop “Apflbutzn”.” (retrieved Jan 2019 from News).

Research

The Catrobat project published a number of papers, in particular with respect to teaching programming to girls.

Links

• Catrobat project page.
• Pocket code app links (Android / MacOs)
• Pocket Code Sharing Site
• Github repository
  • Catroid (aka Pocket Code) repository

Bibliography

Luhana, K. K., Mueller, M., Schindler, C., Slany, W., & Spieler, B. (submitted, 2018). Rock bottom, the world, the sky: Catrobat, an extremely large-scale and long-term visual coding project relying purely on smartphones. arXiv preprint arXiv:1808.06292. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1808.06292.pdf

Petri, A., Schindler, C., Slany, W., Spieler, B., & Smith, J. (2015, August). Pocket Game Jams: a Constructionist Approach at Schools. In Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services Adjunct (pp. 1207-1211). ACM. https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2801610

Petri, A., Schindler, C., Slany, W., & Spieler, B. (2018). Game Design with Pocket Code: Providing a Constructionist Environment for Girls in the School Context. arXiv preprint arXiv:1805.04362.

Slany, W. (2014, October). Pocket code: a scratch-like integrated development environment for your phone. In Proceedings of the companion publication of the 2014 ACM SIGPLAN conference on Systems, Programming, and Applications: Software for Humanity (pp. 35-36). ACM.

Slany, W. (2014). Tinkering with Pocket Code, a Scratch-like programming app for your smartphone. Proceedings of Constructionism.

Spieler, B., Petri, A., Schindler, C., Slany, W., Betran, M., Boulton, H., ... & Smith, J. (2018). Pocket Code: a mobile app for game jams to facilitate classroom learning through game creation. arXiv preprint arXiv:1805.04461. https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.04461