Ways for students to share their scratch projects

« Teaching with Scratch

5 replies [Last post]

Patrick Bacalis

Member

November 05, 2013

I am looking for a way for students to share their scratch projects with each other and myself so that the projects are easily accessible by everyone in the class. I was hoping to create a studio for my class that everyone could add their projects to but I cannot seem to be able to do that from the Scratch website.

I am really hoping that someone can suggest an easy way to do this. Kind of like a "drop box" for our projects from everyone in the class so they can all see them and I can see them all.

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated!

Replies

Robert Noble

Member

November 20, 2013

I agree with Peter R. The children I teach really want to share their creations with the rest of the class but finding a suitable and secure way is tricky. I need something that is quick and easy and won't get bogged down with being blocked by educational ISPs.

On a lighter note, my children have only recently started using Scratch (2 1/2 weeks in) and can't get enough of it. It is seriously blowing my mind!

Robert N

@nobleICT

Kathy Donovan

Member

November 18, 2013

I have been teasting using Edmodo. Kids can post the URLs in the site (after they shared) and we can all see what they have done.

Patrice Gans

Member

November 11, 2013

I agree with your observations. I have been able to create studios and have my students share their programs, but this only works when they are all done with their programs. And once they share their programs, EVERYONE can see it, which starts to be a bit too distracting for the students.

I have been doing pair programming, which I really like, but since students can't share an account it causes a problem when one of the students is absent. I agree a Class Management tool is ideal.

I would love to continue any and all Scratch 2.0 conversations directly. You can find me on twitter @reesegans

Joost Muller

Member

November 10, 2013

Can I ask here if it would be possible to link the sharing to a Google-ID.

Advantages:
1. Widely known, trusted, used. In education paticularly.
2. Allows Google-groups to be used for authroization. This allows both professional (with Google-apps domain) and private (free version of google-groups) usage. If the authorization is chosen the way Zoho com does (allows signing in with a google-apps-domain ID without the domain admin having to authorize it, that would be great)
3. MIT already hosts appinventor which uses google-logins. So it should be known within the organization.
4. It will still allow the core (scratch) to be hosted at MIT or anywhere.
5. Google has a good security reputation.
6. It could be advantageous to not have to share with the whole world. A student could be allowed to share work with just a teacher. This would involve changing the code, though.

Possible disadvantages:
1. Avoid getting tied in to G+ for privacy reasons and it will exclude many domains/schools that do allow Gapps but not G+.
2. General privacy concerns.
3. Will require signup for Google-ID.
4. Exclusion of countries that block Google.

Just my 2c.
Y.

added thoughts:
Currently the way to see the work of a group of students is really only possible of the students make links to their publicly shared projects available.
Ways of doing this?
1. email to teacher. (gets confusing)
2. Collect all links in one google-site or in a forumpost in a google-group or VLE.
3. Put them all in a doc (table) or spreadsheet in a doc that is shared with the group.

Currently it is not possible to collaborate on programming, but that may be aiming to high.
Since students can share IDs they can learn from each other, but could also copy parts from each other. In individual marking situations this is not an advantage.

Peter Ross

Member

November 07, 2013

I'm going to add my two cents to this issue because there have been several posts about class management of Scratch projects since 2.0 came out.

First I want to say how awesome Scratch 2.0 is, and give a big pat on the back to the Scratch team for delivering such a great web app. I still consider Scratch to be my top application for teaching elementary and middle school computer science, as well as just the coolest program to create stuff with in general.

That said, and as others have commented on here, it has been a frustrating experience using Scratch 2.0 in a classroom environment. Creating a class Studio for projects is simply not working. As a result, we cannot see all of our projects in one place, and comment and critique them. Working in the cloud only (with Chromebooks), I am forced to have kids copy and paste links to their projects into an Edmodo group, where we can see each other's work and make comments. Very cumbersome. And with grades where I cannot use Edmodo, I am lost.

I know the Scratch team is working on a Class Management tool, and I have to emphasize that tool cannot come soon enough.
Please know this is not a trivial matter for educators using Scratch 2.0. We desperately want to use Scratch, but this Studio issue is really messing things up :(

respectfully,

Peter R.