We are thrilled to share that Thimble, our code editor for beginners, has been recognized by Common Sense Media as one of the best educational tools online with the 2014 ON for Learning Award. The awards celebrate the year’s best in digital media products designed to educate and engage young people, and have become the most comprehensive tool that parents and teachers rely on for understanding the true educational value of digital media resources.
The award is being announced at a ceremony in San Francisco tonight, featuring 50 other educational apps, games and websites signaled out as game changers.
Thimble also received a 5-star rating from Common Sense Media for its educational value — the highest possible rating available from the organization. A few highlights:
- Engagement – Kids experience the delight of learning to write their own webpages with side-by-side windows that instantly show the effects of their coding tweaks.
- Learning Approach – Authentic coding practice comes alive through fun, community-generated projects. Whether they learn through guided remixing or start a project from scratch, kids can find the right entry point into web design.
- Support – Immediate feedback, baked-in help, and a supportive community all help kids persevere and publish their webpages.
It’s Webmaker’s goal to help people understand the mechanics, culture and citizenship of the web. We created Thimble, along with X-Ray Goggles and Popcorn Maker, to provide free, open source tools that help educators, technologists, makers, and anyone move from consuming to creating the web, in a way that enables creativity and encourages empowerment.
We’re honored to receive this award from Common Sense Media, and really want to thank our Webmaker community for making Thimble what it is today, and continuously working to help make it better. Whether you playtested the earliest version created by Jess Klein and Atul Varma (remember the Love Bomb?), or watched as Kate Hudson, Scott Downe, Michiel”Pomax” Kamermans, Jon Buckley, Chris DeCairos, Thomas Park and others continued to improve it day by day, you know Thimble has come a long way. And if you provided feedback on an open community call, filed or closed bugs, created or remixed content for others to use and learn and share… we’re celebrating this award with and for you!
How to get involved:
- Take part in a conversation with Chris Lawrence, Senior Director of the Webmaker Community Team, on Thursday, April 10th at 7pm ET during an Educator Innovator webinar with National Writing Project. He’ll be joined by educators who are using Thimble to help teach web literacy skills to their learners, and by Common Sense Media to share more background about the award.
- Click to learn more about Common Sense Media’s learning ratings.