Thanks to everyone who was able to join us last Thursday for our first on-the-road Scratch educator meetup in NYC! Here are some notes, reflections, and next steps...
0. Summary video of the meetup
1. Things we saw in Show & Tell
Videos of the Show & Tell presentations are available online in the resources section and include:
2. For the beginners
We had about an hour of hands-on time with Scratch. The suggested activity was to create an interactive collage, but several different paths were explored including trying out the Scratch card activities and checking out the Scratch website.
If this was your first experience with Scratch (or you want a refresher), here are some other resources that you might want to check out, to support your further explorations with Scratch.
3. Breakouts
Mitch wrote a brief description of the breakout session he led around "challenges" (check out the activity and a demonstration video):
In the breakout group, which had about 10 people, we divided time between hands-on "challenges" and discussion. The challenges were designed to explore different ways of adding interactivity to a Scratch project. For example, one challenge was: "Whenever a sprite hears a sound, it changes color." Everyone in the breakout created scripts in response to the challenge, then compared the different approaches used by different people. We discussed how the challenges could be used in the classroom -- and, more broadly, what types of activities are best for connecting with students' interests, while also helping them learn important computational ideas.
Cameron wrote a brief description of the breakout session he led around "computational thinking":
We had an engaging discussion of the various concepts and principles that comprise CT. To guide our discussion, I utilized the Big Ideas of Computational Thinking outlined by the Scratch Team. To shape our discussion and examine CT from both a theoretical and applied perspective, we addressed the first two of three CT Big Ideas, concepts, and practices. In terms of CT concepts, we examined how Scratch provides useful concepts that are directly applicable to computer programming and that these blocks (such as loop, event, operator, and variable blocks) generate an accessible entry point for thinking about CT with Scratch. Next, we discussed the various CT practices. These four practices, incremental/iterative, testing/debugging, reusing/remixing, and abstracting/modularizing, are ideas that can be both applied to computer programming and core content areas within the primary and secondary school setting.
A third breakout session focused on a discussion of video games.
4. Future events
There are lots of ways to keep participating in ScratchEd professional development:
Thanks again for attending the event last week. We look forward to seeing you on ScratchEd!
K
Karen et al, thanks so much for a great event!