Integrating Scratch into School! (Formerly Integrating Scratch in Curriculum and the Arts)

Integrating Scratch into the Curriculum and the Arts

Michelle Chung, Andrea Ange, Debbie Corleto, Frank Abbot, Karen Eutemey, Barbara Sanchez.

k-20 representation at the table.

Andrea Ange- How to use Scratch outside of the CS curriculum?

Debbie Corleto- Create their own live animated comic book for middle school art.

AA- How to get other teachers on board?

Karen Eutemey- Knowing what other teachers are doing is very helpful.

Frank Abbot- There are the physical hurdles: computers for teachers, time for personal development before implementation in class, feeling like they are ready and giving them technical support while they use the tool.

DC- Computer and art people are most likely to use this first.

Barbara Sanchez- I teach French and computer science, so I created a model of famous monument in Paris. Have them do a little walking tour… they will have to do some linear stepping through backgrounds…

KE- Likes to work with groups of kids and have them work with projects that they are working in conjunction with… then the group has the final say would be whichever child might be responsible for each component.

BS- Advisor for the 21^st Century Literacy class which is funny because there are a million definitions for this out there. Who’s to say what that literacy should include? But I can see using this in class.

FA- In the lab they have online lessons. Scratch might be an alternative assignment instead of a PowerPoint, they can use scratch to be the presentation format…You can verify that with the CS teacher, there must be at least one computer for every two kids….

KE We have a lab and carts with laptops you can sign up to be in the lab, or you can sign out a laptop.

DC – Nothing worked last year but now getting them on it and I do want to collaborate just because I’m new to it I’m going to have to go through the curriculum to get people into it.

FA I have mixed feelings about the projects, but they will get caught up in the minutia of the programming part.

KE They’re computer teacher starts working with them in fourth grade in scratch.

DC Do I do it with all of them so they are all working on it all three years?

BS- You mean you get them for all three years? That’s great!

Michelle Chung- What if you did a combo pack? What if you took the tour of the museum, and what if you expanded that into creating a tour of different areas in small groups? If they are working in groups or pairs… Different pieces can be dropped into a combined program. 

AA- Because there is the import function

MC- You can do what Lorraine is doing which is very macro with her world museum.

BS- I introduce it by giving my students one card a week for the kids that want to go faster since I have taught High School Computer Science I could get into other stuff.

AA-Some of the ideas I am hearing are cartooning, creating video type works, mapping areas, creating games and really first we have to find teachers that are interested and either do a formal workshop or reach out to the project based learners in your schools and work with them…

BC- Bring them in and work in collaboration.

KE- the foreign language teachers can use this as an assessment tool... the kids get five points for the getting the response correct and the recording option is also very neat…

MC- You can actually change the language of Scratch. Click on the globe and change it to the language you are teaching…

FA- Do you collect data on who is still using it from the workshops?

MC- Not formal but what we have been seeing is a lot of people continue to use the website and forums for discussion.

We break but I’m sure that more ideas are out there for integrating this into the whole school. Please post your ideas in response to our discussion!