PLIX TeamIn this blog post, we will share different ways the PLIX team and PLIX Library Ambassadors have facilitated OctoStudio programs in public libraries, through the lens of creative learning.
OctoStudio, Creative Learning, and PLIX
OctoStudio, a mobile block-based creative coding app, is developed in the Lifelong Kindergarten Group (LLK) at the MIT Media Lab. As PLIX was part of LLK when OctoStudio was still under development, we had the opportunity to explore what OctoStudio could look like with our public library community.
Some background:
- Notably, LLK is also the birthplace of the Scratch coding community, Lego Mindstorms, and the Logo programming language, all centered around empowering young learners to view computers as tools they can create with.
- Through decades of work by Mitchel Resnick, Natalie Rusk, and many others in the LLK group, LLK research and education have changed the landscape of education around the world, based on their education framework of the 4P’s of creative learning: projects, passion, play, and peers.
- PLIX, now under pK-12 at MIT Open Learning, was founded in 2017 by a group called Digital Learning and Collaboration Studio at the MIT Media Lab. PLIX builds on LLK’s framework of creative learning, inviting public library professionals to engage learners through hands-on STEAM activities based on MIT research.
OctoStudio was designed with creative learning in mind, and invites families to change the conversation about mobile device usage, to view it as a tool for creativity, learning, and expression, rather than for consumption. Building on ideas and projects of the OctoStudio team and OctoStudio partners around the world, PLIX invited public libraries to join the movement.
In summer 2023, PLIX and the OctoStudio team tested out running two family-oriented OctoStudio workshops in public libraries in Massachusetts. Later, public library professionals, as part of the 2023-2024 PLIX Ambassador program, facilitated their own OctoStudio library programs, and shared back their reflections on running the program through the lens of creative learning. By working on OctoStudio projects, bringing in their own interests and passions, how might we engage young learners and their families in playful experimentation, and collaborating or sharing with peers?
Family OctoStudio Workshops in Massachusetts
Just before the official launch of the OctoStudio app in October 2023, PLIX and the OctoStudio team ran two family OctoStudio workshops in Massachusetts, one in Cambridge Public Library, and one in Lincoln Public Library. Both were framed around the prompt of “bring a figure to life.” As such, participants were encouraged to bring in their favorite figurines or plush toys. These workshops were highly structured, with considerations on the space setup, how participants were welcomed into the space, the presentation of the prompt, and a share-out at the end. This structure is modeled after Mitch Resnick’s creative learning spiral. We invited families with children ages 7-11.
Here’s the general structure of the family workshops, about 1.5 hours:
- Outreach: For both workshops, the local library professionals we connected with marketed the workshop through their own channels, including word-of-mouth to families that come into the library, nearby schools, and their newsletters.
- Planning: Besides planning the structure and setup, we also made sure to fully charge the tablets and phones, and update the OctoStudio app to the latest version.
- Welcoming: As participants entered the space, they were invited to craft their own name tag at a welcome table, sign a media release form, and while they waited at the activity tables, they were encouraged to doodle and play with the craft materials already laid out.
- Introductions: Once everyone had arrived, the workshop facilitators led a small ice breaker with caregivers and learners sharing their favorite animals. Then the facilitators presented a slideshow about OctoStudio, the prompt of “bring a figure to life,” and demonstrated how to take a photo of a figure and use OctoStudio to animate it with some of the code blocks. The demonstration made use of the Zoom video conferencing tool to share the iPad screen on the projector screen.
- Activity: The devices were passed out, one for each young person, and caregivers were encouraged through both the signage, or verbally, to create a project together with their child. Facilitators checked in on different tables to support and answer questions.
- Share out: Near the end of the session, the facilitators invited participants to share their projects on the big screen, using a document camera to support this.
We created signage encouraged different ways of playing together with OctoStudio. Although both workshops had the same structure, there were some remarkable differences.
In Cambridge Public Library, over 10 families came with many young learners that were already familiar with Scratch block-based programming. We saw a range of OctoStudio projects including an incomplete complex painting tool in OctoStudio (which did not yet have the code blocks to support this), a project that made a toy airplane take off into the sky, and a gratitude project that expressed appreciation for the workshop. The caregivers showed up in different ways. While there were a few caregivers who were on their personal phones, others engaged with their young learners by asking questions or helping with drawing. Some liked to chat with the facilitators to share their excitement about their child’s learning process, or ask questions about getting the app on their phones.
In Lincoln Public Library, Lincoln, MA, 3 families came with young learners who did not have as much experience with coding. At the start, they only started using the doodling materials when explicitly invited to do so. One mother-daughter pair from Ukraine worked together on an OctoStudio project where their dog (drawn by the mother), who was still in Ukraine, was transported by way of balloon to where they live now.
Another project included a photo of a large plush hamster, a favorite brought in by a young learner, interacting with a giant sunflower seed (drawn and cut from paper by a facilitator).
In both family workshops, it was interesting to see the variety of ways the caregivers opened themselves to play together with their young learners.
PLIX Ambassador Program
What we were particularly curious about, library professionals run an OctoStudio library program for their communities? The family workshops co-lead by the OctoStudio team and PLIX were highly structured, especially with a share-out at the end. This format is different from what most library professionals may do.
Three PLIX Ambassadors, Seth Gray in Kenai, Alaska, Emily Souza in Rockport, Massachusetts, and Mallory Parsons in Ripley, West Virginia, share, in their own voices, their reflections on how their OctoStudio library programs went. There’s no single right way to run an OctoStudio workshop, but what may be seen as different constraints can allow for incredible affordances. Seth and Emily encouraged the use of craft materials with their programs, but found that when they provided each learner with their own device, the craft materials were skipped over. At Mallory’s library, she only had one iPad to use, so she designed her program as a group story crafting session, with each young learner taking turns on the app.
All three shared their favorite PLIX Creative Learning Facilitation techniques that worked really well for their programs, and additional practical considerations for running OctoStudio in their libraries. We hope that you will be inspired by their reflections to run your own OctoStudio library program!
Seth Gray’s STEAM OctoStudio in Kenai, Alaska
Seth ran his OctoStudio program as part of a monthly STEAM program. He prepared 4 devices with the OctoStudio app installed, and the participants included 2 kids (8 years old and 12 years old), and 2 parents.
Seth’s reflections
We only had 2 people arrive because it was snowy and blustery. It was not a great day for it, but it was really exciting to get the 2 kids and both of their parents.
Devices and physical materials
We have 3 iPads and a tablet to share [for] patrons to use. We had a little table where we had a bunch of different prompts and all the craft supplies. But they were not interested as much in the materials. They really just wanted to explore what OctoStudio was. They jumped right in and just started trying different things out. They enjoyed being able to use touch-screen devices to draw and take pictures of things to put in the video. They liked the way they could create controls with the device too.
They did eventually come back to those materials and they actually made a background for a video and then they made a character and tried out a couple of the prompts after they had explored a little bit too.
Facilitation Creative Learning
At first it was a little bit hard to get interested [in OctoStudio]. And that maybe that had part to do with our attendance, but the younger participant jumped right in once she kind of saw what was going on and she was really excited about it.
Keep your hands off the tools — One of the biggest [facilitation] tip with OctoStudio is to really keep your hands off the projects. Because the more I stepped away and just answered little questions here and there, the more they started to discover. And at the end, the 12 year old had figured out more about the app than I have and I've been playing with it for a few months.
Prepare more example projects — It was really cool to see what they were able to create. One thing I would change is creating some more examples of what's possible. It was a little open-ended at first, which for the younger patrons, it's a little bit hard to figure out what they can do, for them to start jumping in.
Create alongside learners — If you do have enough devices, it was very fun for us to create [alongside] them. We problem-solved together as we were making our own games. So overall, it was a really lovely, lovely time and fun app to explore with all the kids.
Continue playing at home — What they love the most is that this is something that they can take home and continue. You're able to share your project quite easily with another device. So we are able to send it to their parents. For them to continue, which is not always the case with some of our crafts and other programs that we run, because all of the materials stay at the library. They really enjoyed using the touch screen devices and getting to be on the iPads. They love taking pictures with it.
What’s next?
More explorers — I want to get more kids in to try out this app. We have a lot of patrons, younger patrons that enjoy playing on Scratch and trying to figure out programming and figure out how to make their sprites move in different ways and in more complicated ways.
Guided prompts — I also want to play around with some more guided prompts with physical materials because that was something that PLIX was amazing and put together a kit for us to try out OctoStudio in our library and it does have a lot of physical materials that I've played with a little bit in how it works with the app. But I want something where the kids can feel a little bit more empowered to try that out.
More time — We only did it for an hour, and we felt rushed so more time is nice for this one because there's so much to explore.
![This is what the 12 year old made. He called it Extreme Leap Frog. And it is a game where the person in green can jump over the person that runs at them in purple. And it was one of those fun things where he had tried and scratched things [out] before but he was playing with the [tilt] controls of “if I move the iPad the person moves.” and exploring what that looked like.](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdmhXx780k3_ZRiAWzkIn8DW1wx199DbRGB77ohnXpZ-DMz-hGw8PikrkK35xG10ISUS_hL_TpKfBBSEK2UDOTmVnTS8c5DJSV63pvT4489bNvBsbZsgMTbVC3L5dTW5l_hWuSq?key=BwVVD56-CZz69HYgOXJBeeSX)
Emily Souza’s Explore Coding with OctoStudio in Rockport, Massachusetts
In Emily’s library program, there were 10 kids, (elementary through 6th graders) a couple of helpful grownups, and a teenage glue gun operator.
Emily’s Reflections
Fantastic young learners and supportive parents — I really lucked out with the kids that we had because they were just a fantastic group. I honestly don't think I could have had a better group of kids for this activity, so I declined to give any tips at the end. We had three or four sibling groups. They were kind of able to bounce things off each other. The grownups we had, happened to be a retired programmer with his granddaughter and a German elementary school teacher and professor with her two kids, who knows Scratch. Considering it was just me [running the program], they were amazing as helpers.
Coding books table — I set up a table with some of our little kid coding books that were aimed at this age. The one in the middle is fun, it has a different concept for each book. The Crayola art of coding is cute. And we have a Scratch book. Nobody checked any of these out by the way, but I thought it was a good idea.
Materials and devices — They loved the magnets. Definitely would recommend having magnets. I was just lucky that two adults had devices that they were able to share, or I would not have had one device per child. So next time I need to plan for that better.
Model curiosity and confidence — I think the [creative learning] principles that I really used was modeling curiosity, because this is a new tool for me too, and I didn't have any of the answers and that was okay. Everyone jumped right in. I was not able to answer any of their technical questions, but that was okay. We just sat together while they figured 'em out on their own. And everybody had their own devices.
Encourage projects on passions — One girl made an app when she shook her phone, it turned the flashlight on and she said, when the cats are under the bed, I'll use this to find them. So that was really cute.
What’s next?
They loved being able to record sounds, especially burps, things of that nature. So I might incorporate some kind of instrument next time or some kind of sound maker or even, I don't know, bring a keyboard that could do different sound effects. That would be cool.
Mallory Parsons’ STEAM Night: Group Storycrafting in Ripley, West Virginia
PLIX Ambassador Mallory Parsons only had one iPad in Jackson County Public Library, Ripley, West Virginia. Her goal was to have the learners craft a story together, and this was communicated in the flyer she created.
Mallory’s Reflections
Group story-crafting
I had 14 kids sign up and four showed up, and it was kind of like a little blessing in disguise. I had the initial plan where we're going to make a story altogether and contribute to it and share it on our social media, and that kind of worked out. But with the four kids, we were able to focus more on what they did, what they wanted to do. We still made a story together, but we were able to spend more time on each kid doing a couple of things instead of just one thing at a time, which I liked a lot.
I had kids craft first and one came up with two backgrounds and two of them only wanted to contribute their little buddies and one kid wanted nothing to contribute except for just actions for the characters to do. So we just kind of winged it and went from there. It was very fun and I had a little bit of trouble personally getting my hands off of the iPad. It did not have a screen protector or a case, so I was very nervous about that. But otherwise, the kids did everything by themselves and if they needed help looking for anything, I was there to do it.
But we made a frog and he jumps through the forest and he finds a mushroom, and then he goes to the stream for a drink of water and then he continues onto his house and Oh yeah, there it is. And then he eats the mushroom, turns into a panda, and then the panda goes to a house and he turns back into a frog after eating another mushroom. It's really funny, we had a trust the process moment because some of the actions we thought would work and they ended up doing completely different things.
So we laughed about it quite a few times and then were able to go through and figure things out. So it's nice whenever you're going through things, you're learning it together, and so kind of just go through and basically validate them for thinking, “Hey, it's not going to be perfect immediately,” but it's nice because you can go through steps and then make sure that you're all apologies that they're all kind of getting what they're wanting to do.
Facilitating creative learning
Open-ended curiosity and confidence — For facilitation tips, I asked open-ended questions to inspire creativity. I was able to ensure there was nothing really wrong that you could do. If we made a mistake, we could go back and get rid of it, or we could change the color or the sound. We can listen to things before we set on something, and if I didn't know the answer to something, I made sure that we learned it together and that asking questions is okay, even if we don't always know the answer.
Different ways of participating — I supported creative learning. Not everyone participated in the same, and that was actually great and acceptable. I'm a big proponent of that. We don't always do everything the same way, and that's okay.
Spark cards — I set out the spark cards next to the iPad where we were sitting, so as we were learning things, they could pick up a Spark card and we could find something to do with that movement or sound or whatever. Instead of just doing one at a time, we were able to do a couple that worked out with just the four kids.
Fun, laughter, and extra time — We had a lot of fun. We laughed for a long time, and we spent an hour and a half instead of just the 45 minutes I was expecting. [That’s because] a lot of my kids do things so fast, so they brush through and then they're done and I struggle to find something else for them to do. So we were able to craft and then move on to the story, which was nice because it was two separate things, even though it was one big program. The parent patrons had a lot of fun. It was honestly, basically an hour and a half of laughing. Loved it. Even with a few mess ups, we were all having a lot of fun and learning together! Parents were very interested in downloading the app at home to play as families!
Give yourself time to grow — I encouraged giving ourselves time to grow, and so whenever I allowed that, because if something didn't happen perfectly right away, a lot of times people like to give up or get frustrated, and we took time to learn how to fix it and make it better.
Let go a little and trust the process — I say prepare yourself because it's a “trust the process” program, it's something that you're not really going to know what you're doing as you go if you're letting them do the story themselves, so you kind of have to let go a little bit, and then at the end you get to enjoy everything that you've done altogether. I think the most fun part is learning together and figuring things out, and I think that sentiment, we're doing this together. We don't have to have everything perfect. I think that sentiment would transfer between older age groups. If you wanted to teach grandparents or parents how to do that, I think that that would transfer really well with them as well. We can figure it out together. It'll be okay.
What’s next?
Using guiding themes and prompts— I think if you were going to do the group story, I would probably pick an actual theme or make it a little bit more specific instead of just a broad term, let the kids do what they want. It worked fine for the four kids, but if I had had the 14 planned, I think it would've been just too wild. Especially if you're sharing devices, it would be really beneficial. You could even have a couple of prompts if you have two or three iPads to share and just basically break that up into teams.
Keep your hands off the tools — I would also try harder to keep my hands off the hardware.
Remember to document — I also need to be better about taking pictures. I do that for other people. I'm really bad about it for myself, so either find somebody to take pictures for me or take them better myself.
Next Steps For You to Try
- 🐙 Check out the PLIX OctoStudio activity resources here, with prompts to try, printable spark cards, suggested materials, and more.
- 💖 For a guided experience using OctoStudio, join the PLIX team in our January 2025 Make’n’Meet workshop, Between the pages: An OctoStudio Sidequest
- 🐸 Learn about the why and how of our Creative Learning Facilitation Techniques here.
- 🤿 For a deeper dive into Facilitating Creative Learning, try our free self-guided email mini course. You can choose from a 2-week or 4-week format!
💌 Also, if you’re interested in applying for the PLIX Ambassador Program, sign up for our monthly newsletter to stay in the loop!