Week 845

Week beginning Monday, 24th March 2025.

On Thursday Google announced that CS First, their Scratch-based computer science curriculum, will be shutting down on 30th June. They also announced that they will be supporting the Raspberry Pi Foundation over the next three years to develop a free, integrated computer science curriculum for elementary and middle school students (8–14 years old) together with a version of the Scratch development environment that’s safe for schools. Experience CS is the project that we’re working on with the Foundation and on Thursday it was also officially announced and the site went live.

As you can imagine we had a busy week leading up to the launch and, despite a lot of last-minute changes, I’m proud to say the launch all went very smoothly. Thanks to the wider Foundation team with particular shout-outs to Mariam our designer, Greg for all his help with infrastructure and operations, and to our own Chris L for his tireless front‑end work!

We’re very excited to be working with the Foundation on Experience CS. It’s great to be collaborating closely with educators as they develop an innovative curriculum which aims to integrate computer science concepts into core subjects like maths, science, languages, and the arts, and make it possible for non-specialist teachers to incorporate elements of computer science into their teaching. It’s also interesting from a technical point-of-view to be building a custom Scratch development environment; something we got a taste of when we worked on Code Club World a few years ago.

Somehow throughout all this Chris L was navigating his way through the process of selling his flat and buying another. On Friday morning we all met up at Space 4 for a “away day” and had a productive couple of hours sorting out company stuff. During this Chris L got the call to say the property transactions had been completed 🎉 and so afterwards he headed off to meet his wife at the new property. Chris R and I had a very pleasant lunch at Tonkotsu before heading over to join Chris L and his wife for an impromptu mini house-warming party🥂! The three of us then headed down to Beer + Burger near Kings Cross for some celebratory craft beers 🍻. Overall a lovely end to the week!