Scratch accounts for classroom use

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45 replies [Last post]

Barbara Robinson

Member

January 27, 2014

Can anybody please advise me on the best way (assuming it is possible) to create Scratch accounts for children's use? I want to set up accounts for my children in Years 5 and 6 to use. Any help much appreciated. Thanks.

Replies

Christan Balch

Member

January 14, 2016

Hi again from the MIT Scratch Team! We have posted an update on Scratch Teacher Accounts here: http://scratched.gse.harvard.edu/discussions/news-and-announcements/scratch-teacher-accounts

Susan Cornett

Member

October 28, 2015

I currently have my students create their own accounts, but I have them use my school address for the email. This way, when they forget their password while at school, I can quickly help them reset it. The probelm is when they forget it during the summer and I have to figure out how to contact them once I have reset it...

I am sure the folks at MIT are workigng on fabulous teacher features, but in the meantime, if they would just give us a simple way to upload a CSV file to create the accounts, that would be awesome!

Kate Ogden

Member

October 26, 2015

What is the word on class accounts? I have a group of 4th graders beginning a class project which they will collaborate actoss classrooms for. We used to be able to login with one class account, but now it is bumping off multiple users. I just need to be able to manage a group of students for class purposes. I either need the classroom functions to work or to allow multiple users of the same account, please. This is a much loved project that I would hate to have die because of difficulties at the site's end. Please advise.

Christan Balch

Member

September 23, 2015

Hi. I’m Christan Balch, the Online Community Coordinator on the Scratch Team at MIT. We understand your frustration with the registration process for students, and we’re sorry for the difficulties that it has caused for you and your students.

We’re continuing to work on Teacher Accounts, which we hope will simplify the process of creating accounts for your students. Unfortunately, the development of the Teacher Accounts has taken much longer than we expected. We hope to have more news about the accounts soon. We’ll make sure to post messages on ScratchEd to keep you informed.

In the meantime, we suggest using a single email address (e.g., a teacher’s email address) to register and approve all of your student accounts. (Multiple Scratch accounts can share the same address.) We realize that the confirmation process can be time-consuming for educators, but confirmation is just a one-time process when first registering an account.

Sorry again for the current difficulties. We hope to have better solutions in the future. Please do feel free to reach out to me should you have more questions.

Thanks!

Eriko Parker

Member

January 07, 2016

Hello,
I am just starting up the after school program with Gr.4-7 students and I have my teacher account.
I am wondering if I can create one gmail account for students to use for thier sign up or if I should use same email address I signned up with?

Thanks,

Christan Balch

Member

January 07, 2016

Hi Eriko! Yes, that would be fine - feel free to create a gmail account for your students to use during the registration process.

Kate Ogden

Member

January 05, 2016

Hi Christan,

Do you know if there have been any updates to this topic? I fairly recently found the workaround I had been using will no longer work, and we are about to start a huge collaborative Scratch project with the entire 4th grade (so, no, they don't have their own email addresses). I realize your suggested workaround is to have each student create an account with my email address, but this implies I am creating a Scratch account for the entire 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th grades with my email account so they can use Scratch.

Downloading and uploading is what I've been left with, but that can get finicky, too..

Thank you for any help and/or guidence you can offer.

Paule Craton

Member

November 17, 2015

Hi Christan,
I have been asking about teacher management accounts in Scratch for a couple of years, as have many other teachers. Saying "We hope to have better solutions in the future" is a pretty discouraging thing to read, when so many people are asking for this feature, loudly and clearly.
Will it happen in the next two months?
thanks,
Pauel Craton

SueAnn Peete

Member

October 20, 2015

Hello Christan,

Has there been any news on student accounts? and or teacher accounts?

Thank you. Speete35

Joanna Hobson

Member

October 20, 2015

Hi Christian.
Could you just clarify the procedure for creating multiple accounts with one email address. Do I do this on the main Scratch website and not through my educator account? I have created a generic email address for our school to use and need to set up about 15 accounts initially for a club I want to run. I'm assuming I just create an account using my generic adddress on the main Scratch website (https://scratch.mit.edu/) and then the procedure to create mutliple accounts will be an option to select?
Thank you for your help.
Joanna

Susan Cornett

Member

September 22, 2015

I don't need a whole manangement system- just a way to easily create accounts from a CSV file would be great!

This was something that Scratch users at the 2014 Conference were very vocal about, so I have been hopeful, but so far... nothing.

Adam Cohen-Rose

Member

September 08, 2015

Looks like educator accounts has been over two years in development... Is it now dead or is there still a chance that it could happen?

Marty Hankins

Member

September 22, 2015

What is happening with the Scratch classroom accounts? I'm frustrated by the lack of progress on this. Should I have students create the accounts at home with their parents or should I use my own school email account? There should be a way to easily create accounts for Middle School and younger students.
marty

Jayme Johnson

Member

August 18, 2015

Any update on the classroom/educator accounts?

Tim Telep

Member

April 09, 2015

Barbara & Marty,

If you are already saving Scratch projects to your network, why not add the Scratch app to your computers? I asked my IT guy to do just that, so now students store their projects on the server and work with the download version of Scratch on our lab desktop computers bypassing the online version all together... at least until Scratch figures out the student account issue that is the theme of this thread.

Good Luck,

Tim

Marty Hankins

Member

April 15, 2015

Good idea, Tim. The download/upload option has worked pretty well and my students are happy they can save their projects. We had the old 1.4 Scratch version downloaded on to the student computers. I will ask our IT guy to replace it with the 2.0 version and bypass the online version until a solution is provided. Thanks, Tim.
marty

Barbara Robinson

Member

April 09, 2015

Yes, that's what I have been doing till now, Marty. It works but is rather annoying to have to do this every time - and would be much better to have the ability set up online classroom accounts (easily!)

Marty Hankins

Member

April 08, 2015

I am going to experiment with students saving their Scratch files on our network and then uploading them back to the Scratch website. This is not ideal and does not address the community aspect of Scratch, but at least students will be able to save their work. All of my students know how to save a file to their documents and retrieve them. It eliminates having to use a third party application.
It would be nice if it was easy to create student accounts but I can't have each child have to use their parents' personal email account and then wait for parents to respond. I don't have to do that for any other subscription we have.
Instead of a studio on the Scratch website, students will have a Scratch files folder on our network.
I will let you know how this works.
marty

Barbara Robinson

Member

April 01, 2015

There are obviously lots of people who would find this really useful - I really hope that the educator feature becomes available soon. Any news, Scratch?!

Thank you:)

Marty Hankins

Member

April 08, 2015

Yes, my students were very frustrated yesterday because they couldn't save their work. They are lower school students with no email accounts. My understanding was that the classroom management component of Scratch was in the works and supposed to be rolled out over a year ago.
marty

Ann Moyle

Member

April 02, 2015

Yes - this would be a big breakthrough for using Scratch in the classroom. I'd love to set up a closed class studio where all the projects could be posted and viewed. Right now it's too cumbersome to do this with all the workarounds. That said, I cannot understate how wonderful Scratch is as a resource and I thank you a million times.

Janet Wentum

Member

March 31, 2015

I'm interested in that as well.

Marty Hankins

Member

January 14, 2015

Any updates on student accounts for Scratch 2.0?
Hoping to hear something soon.
marty h

Karen Brennan

Member

January 15, 2015

Hi Marty,

Unfortunately, no updates. I promise to post an update here as soon as I know anything.

Sincerely,
K

Kate Ogden

Member

January 05, 2016

Hi Karen,

Do you know if there have been any updates to this topic? I fairly recently found the workaround I had been using will no longer work, and we are about to start a huge collaborative Scratch project with the entire 4th grade (so, no, they don't have their own email addresses). I read here that one teacher's workaround was to have each student create an account with her email address, but I don't really want to create accounts for every 4th grader with my email address, particularly because I would have to do it for 3rd graders and 2nd graders as they begin their Scratch projects....

Downloading and uploading is what I've been left with, but that can get finicky, too..

Thank you for any help and/or guidence you can offer.

Karen Brennan

Member

January 05, 2016

Hi Kate,

Unfortunately, I have no information about timeline. Perhaps Christan from the MIT Scratch Team will be able to share more information...

Marty Hankins

Member

November 12, 2014

I wonder if this is even still on the table.
marty

Michelle Choi

Member

November 12, 2014

The MIT Scratch Team is hoping to release the educator accounts by the end of this year, or in early 2015. Stay tuned for more info!

Marty Hankins

Member

December 16, 2014

Michelle,
Is there an update on the timeline for this yet? I'm hoping to use it with a class after our winter break; we are back in session on Jan. 6.
marty

Marty Hankins

Member

November 18, 2014

This is good news, indeed! Looking forward to learning more!
marty

Jayme Johnson

Member

November 13, 2014

Thanks for the update Michelle. Wating anxiously for this add-on. It will be a huge step toward providing access to Scratch for students, particularly those under 13, and toward encouraging wider educational use by making interaction and monitoring a bit more streamlined for teachers.

Jayme Johnson

Member

November 11, 2014

Any update on the classroom/educator accounts?

Ivan Rego

Member

July 09, 2014

A possible solution could be to use multiple email addresses in gmail.
Gmail - conveniently - ignores anything after a +
For instance an email sent to me@gmail.com, me+student1@gmail.com, me+student2@gmail.com show up in me's inbox.
Of course you will have to create an account in Scratch for each of your students.
The students, on the other hand, will not be needing their own personal email accounts.

You can further 'filter' your emails and direct them to folders set up as Student1, Student2, Student3, etc.

I hope I didn't miss the mark on this post.
I signed up for Scratch a day ago and I'm excited.

You guys are awesome!!

Mary Spyropoulos

Member

June 04, 2014

Is there an update regarding Scratch educator accounts? I am getting ready to teach a summer school class and would be interested in a classroom management tool. Does anyone have a sample letter that can be sent to parents asking parents to establish scratch accounts for students?

Michelle Choi

Member

July 10, 2014

The MIT Scratch Team is hoping to release the educator account feature later this fall. We'll keep posting any updates we hear.

Michelle Choi

Member

May 20, 2014

We don't have an update yet on educator accounts, but we will post as soon as we know. Thank you all for your patience!

Doris Spencer

Member

May 13, 2014

Still waiting on news on educator accounts. Creating accounts for several students is very time consumimg.

Marty Hankins

Member

May 13, 2014

Are there any updates about the Educator Accounts or Classroom Management System?
I just created accounts for 2 classes using a class email so my students could have their own "Scratch space" and be able to save their work, but it was tedious. Looking forward to an easier way to manage classes.
marty

Lorraine Leo

Member

March 19, 2014

I look forward to having a Classroom Management system. In the interim I created separate accounts and passwords for each of my students in grades 4 - 6. The usernames included the school initials, the grade level, and the students initials.(For example: GS4TM ) I typed the usernames and passwords that I created for students into a google spreadsheet that we often refer to. I used my email address for all of the accounts. This account is for projects that we are doing in class. Some students have their own personal account for Scratch that they've set up with their families.

Sandy Coleman

Member

March 20, 2014

Hi Lorraine,
I have done the same for all of my 5th grade aprox 100 students. And I have also used the same formula for username. The problem I am having now is organizing their projects. I created studios for each class but inviting each student to be a curator has been quite budensome and time consuming. Wondering how you are handling viewing and keeping track of you student's projects and monitoring comments?

Lorraine Leo

Member

March 21, 2014

Sandy, I logged into each of the students accounts and created a 'placeholder project' with the project title and the students initials. (This is a project that the students worked on for four weeks.) Then I created a Scratch account and a studio for each of the three grade levels. I added each of the placeholder projects to the studios. (This set up is time consuming.) When I go to the studios I see all of the projects from that grade level . I haven't figured out a way to monitor the comments without clicking on each one of them. It will be helpful to have a classroom management system.

Mr Matthews

Member

March 17, 2014

I'm very open to an Educator's account. I think that rolling out Scratch accounts per class may be a little daunting from a child protection/internet safety perspective. I would want to have some element of control as to what my students 'share' with the rest of the world. I do hope that the educator's accounts do allow us to make a more 'closed-off' community whereby only specific members can view and comment,
Ben Matthews

Michelle Choi

Member

February 12, 2014

I recommend letting kids create their own username and email (if they have one), especially if you think anyone might want to use Scratch outside of class. If they are under age 13, educators might have students use the teacher's email or set up a class email to use. I've heard educators say that they prefer having students use the teacher's email because any notifications of inappropriate content will be sent to the email on file for the account.

Another option is to have young students create profiles at home with a parent or guardian providing an email. This could be assigned for homework with a letter home about Scratch and a place to fill in the chosen username and password -- so teachers can keep a master list on hand just in case a student forgets their account info.

NOTE: The MIT Scratch Team is developing "educator accounts" to help educators create and manage student/class acounts. They plan to release this feature later this year.

Hope that helps! I'd love to hear other ideas.
Michelle Chung, on behalf of the ScratchEd Team

Peter Ross

Member

February 13, 2014

By "later this year" I hope you mean before September :) In any case, excellent news.

Karen Rogers

Member

January 29, 2014

Yes, I would be very interested to hear if a classroom management system has been set up as well.