Blot – code, art, robots and open source education
For the last few years, I've been working at a non-profit called Hack Club developing tools to support self-motivated teens to learn about technology and build community with other like-minded peers while doing so. This has resulted in the development of a model called "you ship, we ship." We build open source creative coding environments, and when teenagers share the projects they make with these tools, we send them materials to dive deeper into the subject and related technologies. Our approach is predicated on the constructionist idea that people learn best by building things they care…
In plain words
Blot is an open source creative coding environment developed by Hack Club, a non-profit supporting self-motivated teenagers in learning technology. It serves as a gateway to CNC robotics, allowing young people to build projects they care about and share them with peers. Following Hack Club's "you ship, we ship" model, when teens complete projects using Blot, they receive materials to explore related technologies deeper, building both skills and community through constructionist learning principles.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
In the maker’s words, at launch
For the last few years, I've been working at a non-profit called Hack Club developing tools to support self-motivated teens to learn about technology and build community with other like-minded peers while doing so. This has resulted in the development of a model called "you ship, we ship." We build open source creative coding environments, and when teenagers share the projects they make with these tools, we send them materials to dive deeper into the subject and related technologies. Our approach is predicated on the constructionist idea that people learn best by building things they care about and sharing them with others. The vision we have is to create a public collection of creative learning tools that offer people projects they can do right away and communities of practice to engage with. Blot is our next installment in the series. It's designed to be a gateway to CNC robotics through digital art. If you'd like to see some of the projects people have made so far, you can check out: https://blot.hackclub.com/gallery You can also find projects from our first "you ship, we ship" called Sprig. It's a game console you get by building a game for it. https://sprig.hackclub.com/gallery I'd love people's thoughts on the model and ideas for other subjects in technology we could build projects around.
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