🐙OctoStudio - Mobile App from the Creators of Scratch!

Image credit: MIT Media Lab

OctoStudio is a new mobile app created by the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab - the folks who created the popular Scratch coding app. OctoStudio is a coding app designed for the smaller screens of mobile devices including mobile phones and it makes use of the sensors on a phone too. 

OctoStudio Overview

The OctoStudio trailer video shows the kinds of applications that you can create. The hope is clearly that the app will be integrated into everyday life and used in social situations. 

OctoStudio - Age range

The creators say that OctoStudio works well for children aged 7-12 though they also recommend using it as a family which is great way to include younger children. 

The starting age for OctoStudio is recommended at 7 so older than ScratchJr (5-7) and younger than Scratch (8+). OctoStudio is very pictorial, it uses vertical stacking blocks like Scratch but there's a lot more use of visual cues which will help kids who aren't yet confident readers. Some of the things you can make with OctoStudio actually seem pretty tween and teen friendly (yeah grown ups too!) so it will be very interesting to see who the app ends up being popular with. 

OctoStudio - First impressions

The app is available for Android and iOS devices. We've tried it on both. It's free and quick to download and install. 

Accessibility and Inclusion

OctoStudio has support for more than twenty languages right from the start and it also uses lots of pictorial communication.

OctoStudio integrates with mobile screen readers and there's useful option to turn on sound effects for visual blocks. The blocks use a palette of high contrast pastel colors with black text. 

The emoji characters are available in a choice of skin colors with default being brown skin. Thought has clearly gone into this. The use of emoji means that the choice of foods is much more international than the American fare found in Scratch. 

OctoStudio - What can you do?

When you create a new project you are guided to:

• 🪴Choose a sprite (characters or object) in OctoStudio these are emojis (age appropriate ones!)
• 🖼️Choose a backdrop - there's a small selection
• 🧱Add code

This works really well to get you started quickly. 

A 'when green flag' is added for you, but you can quickly select a 'when I shake' block to do something when you shake the phone or tablet.

There are some included examples that help beginners to see what's possible with the app. 

The app is well suited for taking out and about on a mobile phone. Younger kids in the age range are more likely to have a tablet which is a bit less portable so expect them to want to borrow your phone! Older kids might have their own phone and the app doesn't require the latest phone so it's a great use for a hand me down device. 

OctoStudio - Basic features

OctoStudio works really well on a touch screen device, it's really fast to drag and drop and move code around. You can pinch and zoom to quickly navigate around your code. 

You can change the color and size of sprites, make them jump, record and play sounds, add text and lots of other features that we've come to expect from block-based coding apps. There's a sound editor and you can draw your own sprites in the paint tool. OctoStudio also adds micro-bit style physical computing interactions using the inputs and outputs that are already there on the phone. 

Some features are simplified compared with Scratch so you can create some kinds of behavior more quickly. There are some fairly advanced features including variables and creating your own blocks. 

Inputs and Outputs

OctoStudio gives your projects access to lots of inputs and outputs on your device. You can easily record and edit sounds and take photos to use as backdrops or sprites, a nice feature is shaped cropping which is a nice modern touch.

You can detect a shake or make the phone vibrate (buzz) and turn the phone flashlight on and off. There's a 'tilt to move' block which helpfully come with a forever block wrapped around it (to avoid a common mistake in Scratch!) Tilt to move is very satisfying! There's a block to detect a nearby magnet (if your device has a magnetometer). 

A neat feature is sending messages using Bluetooth to nearby devices that are also running OctoStudio, There are five different colored shape messages that you can send. This makes OctoStudio a really social experience. 

Sharing projects

You can share projects as an mp4 video, a gif (without sound) or as a project file that someone else with OctoStudio can open on their device. 

Summary

As you'd expect from the Lifelong Kindergarten group, OctoStudio is well-designed and works well. We can definitely see this being popular with families and with groups of friends. It also has the all the features you'd need to teach a creative computing curriculum including physical computing, at home or in a school classroom. 

Some of the features are straight-up improvements on features that are already in Scratch, I think there's going to be some frustration from kids who use both tools and want to mix the features. Maybe we'll see some of the features of OctoStudio make their way into Scratch in future.

Ready to download OctoStudio or want more info? There's a website at octostudio.org where your can download the app and an OctoStudio reference guide if you're the kind of family that likes to read the documentation!