Many may wonder why after our big Hour of Code event we didn’t have any updates this winter! Well after spending around 6 months building Monster Coding, the first reason is because we were a bit burned out! Participating as a partner in the Hour of Code was exciting, but it also took a ton of work and sacrifice on the part of my family to make it happen. So after the big event I needed to spend some time focusing on the family. At the same time, our 3 year old daughter Catherine was formally diagnosed with Autism. While we had suspected Autism as the cause of her speech delay some months earlier, the actual diagnosis turned out to have a larger impact on all of us than I anticipated. I’ve spent a huge amount of time researching Autism and the different treatment approaches, which I found is a topic where there is little agreement among the experts. We’ve also been working with her every day, as no amount of outside intervention can equal the impact parents and siblings have on a child each day. So it’s only really in the last month that I’ve begun working on Monster Coding and the graphic engine behind it (Kwippe) - finally integrating the Aliens into the graphic engine for Monster, as well as into blocks that can now be used to build lessons with. I added some fun alien backgrounds, as well as an awesome new gradient builder, which gives you a million more interesting ways to color your creations in the Monster Code Lab.
We’ve got a lot planned for the summer! I’ll be rolling out the new lessons shortly, as well as some printable PDF’s for teachers and parents to use for summer activities. Please check our Twitter feed for updates - @monstercoding - as this is the spot where I am most active. You can also subscribe to our newsletter by scrolling to the bottom of the homepage. You may also notice that we updated our interface a bit - I tried to clean things up a bit, and make us slighter sleeker. Not sure if I achieved that or not! But anybody who has been using the app regularly should find that some of the glitches have been fixed as well. If you find an error anywhere, do give us a shout out via our contact us, or FB or Twitter - I try to respond to such reports quickly.
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