Richard Byrne wrote a follow-up piece about Blackbird on Free Technology for Teachers.
In short, Blackbird is a platform that is trying to bridge the gap between using block editors like Scratch and making students jump into a full-fledged IDE without any built-in support resources.
![](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/0ddd74_fda3ad7f51834934a3ac4a4111587b94~mv2.png/v1/fill/w_49,h_28,al_c,q_85,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,blur_2,enc_auto/0ddd74_fda3ad7f51834934a3ac4a4111587b94~mv2.png)