FAQ: History of Catrobat and Pocket Code

[Wolfgang Slany]

• When did you start working on these, and what were some of the key points in the development timeline? 

• Start of project: February 2010.
  
• First Android alpha version of Catroid: June 2010.
  
• Catroid is selected as a mentoring organization during Google Summer of Code: February 2011.
• Catroid is again selected as a mentoring organization during Google Summer of Code: February 2012.
• Catroid and Paintroid preinstalled under the "I want to be a programmer" icon on the home screen of the new OLPC tablet: January 2013.
  
• Catroid is again selected as a mentoring organization during Google Summer of Code: February 2013.
• Austrian National Innovation Award in the category multimedia and e-business: March 2013.
  
• First public betas of Pocket Code and Pocket Paint on Google Play: July 2013.
• Google is promoting Pocket Code during the launch of Google Play for Education: November 2014.
• Catrobat (previously Catroid) is again selected as a mentoring organization during Google Summer of Code: February 2014.
• First Android public releases of Pocket Code and Pocket Paint on Google Play: March 2014.
• Pocket Code featured during back-to-school promotion on Google's main search page for 24 hours: September 2014.
• Pocket Code is featured on codeweek.eu during the European code week: October 2014.
• Pocket Code is featured on code.org under "Tutorial apps for phones and tablets": December 2014.
• "No One Left Behind" (NOLB) project focussed on Pocket Code funded with 3.2 million Euro by European Commission starts: January 2015.
  
• Catrobat featured on Google's Open Source blog: February 2015.
• Catrobat is awarded a CS4HS grant by Google: April 2015.
• Compiler for Catrobat programs into Android apks released: June 2015.
• Public release of Pocket Code fully supports Lego Mindstorms NXT motors and sensors via Bluetooth: July 2015.
• Pocket Code featured in Google's official "Tech Tips from Teachers" YouTube channel: August 2015.
• Pocket Code is sponsored by Google on codeweek.eu during the European code week: October 2015.
• Pocket Code wins a European Lovie Award and a People's Lovie Award in the category Mobile & Application: October 2015.
• Pocket Code and the No One Left Behind project win the ICT 2015 'Young Minds' Award - Grand Prix Best Connect Exhibitor Award: October 2015.
  
• Public release of Pocket Code fully supports bidirectional control of analog and digital pins of Arduino boards via Bluetooth: November 2015.
• Catrobat educator's community edu.catrob.at platform launched, features among others MOOCs, several tutorials, and plenty of materials on how to integrate Pocket Code into school curricula: November 2015.
• Catrobat, together with the Scratch project, the British Library, the University of Oxford, as well as several other prominent partners, organizes the worldwide online Alice in Wonderland Game Jam during the computer science week from code.org (it's the 200th anniversary of Lewis Carroll's book): December 2015.

• Planned for the next releases, in beta as of January 2016: support of Parrot's AR.Drone 2.0 via WiFi, and a Box2D based physics engine.
  

 - Wolfgang

[nureld...@gmail.com]

Hello Wolfgang,

I guess it's necessary to update the content here because many students using it with the task" Write a draft article about Catrobat for Wikipedia in your language".

Lg, Nur