International Catrobat Association

Computational thinking for all with free visual coding apps The Catrobat project develops useful frameworks to create games, animations, or apps easily within a short time. This set of mobile creativity tools for smartphones is inspired by the well-known Scratch framework by the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab. The motivation behind the project is that programming is an important cultural technique on the same level as mathematics and physics, from a practical as well as from a philosophical point of view. Our aim thus is to popularize the skills needed to program from an early age in a fun and engaging way that will facilitate the spread of its adoption among young people all over the world. Our awarded Android app “Pocket Code” is currently the most famous outcome of the project. Without the need for any further devices, users have the possibility to create their first program directly on their mobile device in just a few steps using visual "Bricks". Pocket Code supports all common device sensors, provides special "Bricks" for different robotic devices (Lego Mindstorms, Robotix Phiro, etc.) as well as for hardware devices such as the Arduino board or the Raspberry Pi, and of course offers elements of programming languages such as variables, if-statements, concurrency, etc. We also work on "Pocket Code" for iOS and on a large number of extensions. That’s why developers of different fields help us to keep our products up-to-date to meet the current needs of our users. Motivated by prizes (such as the Lovie Award, the Austrian National Innovation Award or the Re-Imagine Education Award) and being featured by different programs (like Google Play for Education or code.org), our team is working on many different subprojects and extensions. Over 500 developers already contributed to our project on different topics such as app development, web technologies, graphics, usability, internationalization, or design.