Pocket Code

Introduction

Pocket Code 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 versions of our free apps since 2014 and 47 releases of the main coding app as of July 2018, Catrobat currently has more than 700,000 users from 180 countries, is available in 50+ languages,and has been developed so far by almost 1,000 volunteers from around the world. Catroba tis strongly inspired by Scratch and indeed allows to import most Scratch projects, thus giving access to more than 30 million projects on our users’ phones as of July 2018.” (Rock bottom, the world, the sky: Catrobat, an extremely large-scale and long-term visual coding project relying purely on smartphones), retrieved Jan 28, 2019.

Pocket code can be used in individual settings, regular lessons in schools, or settings like game jams.

See also:

• Scratch

Embroidery module

In 2019, an embroidery extension has been added. It allows to code self-created patterns and designs which can be exported in the DST format. Imported on DST capable stitching machines, these designs can be stitched on t-shirts, pants, or even bags or shoes. With Pocket Code, the embroidery machines becomes programmable, similar to the 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 (September 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 are continuously extending the app's embroidery extension. The project is 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 and students experimenting exclusion problems. Spieler et al. argue “that the programming app Pocket Code can support students in their learning goals and in combination with the promising concept of game jams for project works at schools.”

Links

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

Bibliography

Other

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.