Susan joins Scratch to discuss making coding more accessible for kids
May 24, 2022 – [[read-time]] minute read
For the 15th anniversary of Scratch, a creative coding platform used by 42 million people, Susan answered questions from students about working in tech.
Questions to Susan included what she was like as a child, the challenges she has faced in her career, whether YouTube has deaf employees, and her favorite videos to watch.
Scratch received a $5 million dollar Google.org grant in 2020 to expand its efforts to provide resources and training to educators and young people who are historically excluded from computing. CS First, Google's coding curriculum for elementary school students, is built on the Scratch editor and has taught students across the globe how to code.
“Google.org has been a huge supporter of Scratch and with our last grant we actually were able to start the Scratch Education Collaborative, so it’s a group of organizations around the world that are really focused on helping kids to learn how to code creatively,” Young said.
There’s a shortage of teachers that can teach coding...even if there’s no coding teachers in their area, they can use it with your channel, which I love.”
“We’ve definitely seen a lot of ways that video has enabled learning in new ways and I’m so excited to see that with Scratch,” Wojcicki told Young. “There’s a shortage of teachers that can teach coding, and so the fact that you can make it scalable and accessible to anyone no matter where they are - even if there’s no coding teachers in their area, they can use it with your channel, which I love.”