Creative Computing 2011 - Mid-point review

Thank you for a wonderful, creative, and information training session.  It was more than I had hoped it to be!  I really enjoy having the mini-sessions yesterday so we could pick what was most meaningful for me. 

I also am still collecting lesson plan and project ideas.

My initial goal was to develop some very specific activities to support my classroom content standards, mostly ELA. I've been able to come up with ideas for demonstration/teaching, expression/student creation, and assessment.

I still want to explore how Scratch can be used with Lego Mindstorms and also use a Pico board.
Also, I have no idea how to use variables or lists.

My goals were to feel comfortable enough to share Scratch with my colleagues and students and to look at Scratch with robotics.

Through the exercises with and without Scratch I DO feel comfortable to introduce Scratch to help people move forward in their creativity. I realize my goal is to help teachers see how they can integrate technologies, as an educator, that i am comfortable with, and you have provided us with so many tools.

I have had some exciting conversations this morning with the people at the peach table about robotics. I believe we are getting together this afternoon to share what we know, what we don't know, and what we want to know.

 My goal was to see how Scratch might fit into my third grade engineering initiative. The implications of using Scratch to help teach the engineering design process are obvious.

My new goal is to sort out a framework for teaching a trimester-long unit on engineering with Scratch. How do I balance giving enough support to those that need it without stifling those who will thrive from open-ended projects?

I'm thinking about starting with the basics of Scratch, perhaps using those flash cards and a simple starter activity. I'll likely incorporate some of the fun lessons demonstrated over the past couple of days (having kids act out commands as sprites!).

That could be followed up with some loosely-defined goals, as we did here. i.e. Make a dance party.

Then we can move to a culminating project that is much more open-ended. Maybe kids can make proposals for their projects before beginning. That way I can offer guidance for those who do not have a clear goal yet, while staying out of kids' way if they don't need me.

Any suggestions would be fantastic... I'd love to hear your ideas.

My goal was to be inspired. I've definitely been exposed to some great ideas that will keep me thinking for a while. I've enjoyed the variety of activities: in addition to the specifically Scratch-focused training, I loved the tour and the panel discussion.

I would love to hear Mitch, Karen, Michelle and Amanda describe their visions of "what schools could/should look like," and also learn about innovative or "model" schools they they are aware of.

I'd like us to think ahead about ways for all of the participants and facilitators to continue to collaborate in the future. One suggestion would be to make it easier to identify workshop participants on the ScratchEd site.

I also want to make time to learn and explore possibilities with the PicoBoard. I'll probably do this during the independent project time and/or the game time.

I agree that "broadcast/receive" are very useful commands. I'd be interested to learn about other commands that I may not yet be familiar with.

I'm enjoying the opportunity to be here.

Larry

I had imagined this workshop to be strictly focused on Scratch programming and so I came here just hoping to see how I can create activities or games with the students in my school.   However, being introduced to the panelists last night and the tour of the MIT lab has made me think of other kinds of possibilities.  I hope to create a write up of all the resources and ideas that have come out of what I learned these days to folks in my professional learning network (PLN).  I think there's a lot of folks that I know that are doing interesting things in their schools and don't know of the wonderful resources coming from MIT.  So my new goal is not only to work in my school with Scratch and what I've learned here, but to spread the wealth of information with my PLN.  

One thing I would like to do is to continue the digital conversation of sharing tips, tricks, and scratch programming files.

I have met my goal in that I know that I want to use Scratch in my curriculum for both 8th graders and the Intro to CS course.  I have thoroughly enjoyed learning so much about Scratch in such a short period of time. 

A second and not expected outcome of the workshop so far is getting ideas for activities to do with my class to introduce lessons.  I really enjoyed the story telling activity and even the way that algorithmic thinking has been play acted in this workshop.  I use role playing in my classroom for concepts such as recursion and sorting and searching.  The workshop has given me additional ideas that I can use for teaching CS in any of my courses.

I would like to learn how to make games in Scratch.  I can probably muddle thru it now but I am looking forward to learning how others use Scratch to make games.  My students are very drawn to any language in which they can write games.

In what way(s) have you made progress on these goals? What aspects of the workshop have been helpful? What else do you need to achieve the goals you initially set?

• By participating in the hands-on activities, I have been able to think of how I will bring them back to my classroom.
• Last night's panel discussion introduced me to a new software, Tale Blazers, which I hope I will be able to use.

Have new goals emerged? That is, are there other things that you haven't done or learned or explored yet that you really want to do before the end of the workshop?

• I just want to learn more, more, more..... to bring back.  I am trying to develop my course.

Two of my initial goals were to become more comfortable with Scratch in general and to develop project ideas & resources.  All of these goals have been met.  I'm feeling really excited about bringing these ideas back to my students.  One of my additional goals is to develop an assessment process for an open-ended scratch project.  I am thinking about how I can bring students into the process of deciding what makes a superior quality scratch project by watching projects on the website and then discussing the projects that really stood out and why.  I do want to have my own ideas as well about what my expectations need to be in terms of learning outcomes as well.

The modeled learning activities have been helpful in learning both the basics programming steps of Scratch as well as powerful  command like 'broadcast'.  My goal of learning more of the advanced commands (operations and variables) would be helpful. It has been very helpful meeting K-12  teachers from various parts of the country listening to their ideas about using Scratch and education.

One new goal is to find out how to 'best' organize a gallery where k-5 students can post work so that it can be viewed or found in quick manner (within a district with multiple schools or within a school with many class sections on a grade level)

  Your modeling has provided new teaching strategies for me. Thank you.

It's great to have had longer stretches for using Scratch than in the past.  I have a better feel for what it takes to program and this will serve me well in understanding what kids at my school have already been introduced to.  Also, I'm a little more confident in thinking I can better think about integrating into a collaborative project between Art, Tech and Language that already exists.  I'm even thinking about using it in Music class for kids to illustrate form.

I would like to learn more about the music portion of Scratch.  From what I've seen so far it doesn't seem intuitive, but I'd love to be proven wrong!

• I'm getting a better feel for Scratch every day and enjoy learning new techniques every day. Collaborative atmosphere is helpful and fun.  Thanks! 
• I wonder how Scratch handles such CS ideas as finding the max value in a list or sorting a list of values

My goal was to learn more about scratch so I would be able to re-work some projects that we have curriculum projects in microworlds, so our older students have an opportunity to become more experienced in scratch.  The chance to connect with other teachers and learn about their uses and wishes for scratch in their classroom is invaluable. I believe both of these goals are being met.

I've definitely deepened my knowledge of the "workings" of Scratch through the collaboration and sharing activities.  Beyond that, and perhaps more importantly, I've gotten some terrific ideas for how to embed Scratch into curriculum in meaningful ways AND I've seen some great examples of lessons/activities/ I can do to introduce Computational Thinking to my students.  I feel like I'm definitely on my way to achieving the goals I set the first day.

I'm not sure if I can consider this a "new goal" or not, but I've changed my perspective on how I think Scratch should be used.  I think I was struggling with the idea of creating projects that were open-ended enough to allow students to work at their strengths and interests, YET have enough rigor to use as assessment.  Now, I am looking at things differently and realize that I don't have to take on so much of the responsibility and I can focus on the process for assessment and allow students to choose content.  I'm still working through this new thought...and look forward to clarifying it even more over the next few days.

Sandi

One of my goals was to have an opportunity to interact with other professionals to learn different activities to use with Scratch.  I have learned a great deal up to this point and I plan to continue connecting today and tomorrow.

Even though I have been using Scratch in my classroom already, I have learned many new techniques that I wasn't aware of!  Thank you!

I have progressed towards my goals so far - I've learned quite a few new elements of Scratch that open up new possibilities for me.  My goal for the remainder of the session is to collaborate with my colleagues in designing a unit for our 3rd grade.

I think my initial goals have been met. I think I can integrate Scratch into my curriculum in a way that will interest students.

My new goal will be to see how I can get Scratch to work with Lego robotics kits.

My original goal was to gain confidence in using Scratch, thus allowing me to work with students and teachers back home. I have made progress in terms of learning more and feeling comfortable in the program. However, I am still looking forward to more Scratch time :) The introduction to each activity has been very helpful for me. I have learned to watch the demos carefully, try new things, and ask questions. One project I loved was the partner/switch work. We started a story, moved over to another, and finished with a third. Very cool idea, lots of benefits.

My new goal is to create more than animation. I want to learn how to make my work interactive. Perhaps a game. Maybe today. And gee, maybe I'll think about getting/using a Picoboard like Larry :)

 I have been able to meet people with the same focus as myself who do things differently. I have learned of other approaches to teaching programming that I can try. 

The most useful thing I have learned so far is the "broadcast" block.  This opens up a whole new set of ideas for me that I can use in my class.  This was my primary goal in taking this course.

New goals have not really emerged for me.  I would be nice if we can do something with a pico board.

I feel that I have completely achieved my goal thus far.  I wanted to become more familiar with Scratch so I could provide professional development for my school district.  I am sure there is so much more to learn, but I feel that I have a good foundation to build upon.  The only thing I might be lacking is more ideas on how to incorporate scratch into other disciplines other than math & computer science.

I would really love to learn how to make backgrounds scroll so I could help students create more interactive projects.