BLC Pre-Conference Workshop: Digital Storytelling with Scratch - Monday, July 15, 2012

Happily Ever After: Digital Storytelling with Scratch
Building Learning Communities (BLC) Pre-Conference Workshop
Monday, July 15, 2012
8:30am-12:30pm
MIT Media Lab
Hosted by Mitch Resnick and Karen Brennan

Do you love stories? Do you want to learn how to create your own interactive digital stories? In this hands-on session, participants were introduced to Scratch, created interactive stories, viewed examples of stories created by young people and heard how Scratch is being used by educators for storytelling.

Characters
To contact another participant, click on their name below to leave a comment on their profile.

• Erika Bolte
• Amy Burvall
• Molly Buttitta
• John Egan
• Anne Marie Fries
• Janet Gray-McKennis
• Angelica Guerrero
• Mary Anne Hamilton
• Matthew Heard
• Miguel Marquez
• Chynel McCrink
• Geetha Narayanan
• Larissa Perkins
• Siobain Perkins
• Brian Puerling
• Frank Slabaugh
• Mitch Resnick
• Karen Brennan
• Michelle Chung

Preface
As attendees arrived, they received a Scratch Starter Kit and set up their Scratch and ScratchEd accounts.

• Installing Scratch
• Signing up for a Scratch account
• Signing up for a ScratchEd account

Chapter 1: In Character
To get started, Karen shared examples of Scratch projects from the storytelling genre.

• Dinosaur
• Monster Mash
• The Lion and the Boar
• Day Dream
• Alexander the Great
• Napoleon

Participants were then given 10 minutes to dive into Scratch, explore, and then share what they discovered.

• Delete the cat
• Import a character
• Import a sound
• Record a sound
• Add a background
• Draw a character
  

In the next activity, participants drew monsters in the style of exquisite corpse. One person drew the top portion, passed it on to the next person who filled in the body, who then passed the drawing onto a third person who finished the bottom part of the monster. Check out photos of the "exquisite characters" on the ScratchEd Flickr page.

Chapter 2: Plot Twist!
Attendees created pass-it-on stories. During this activity, each person was given 15 minutes to work on a story, and then, participants rotated seats to pass their story to the next person for another 15 minutes, followed by time for sharing.

Chapter 3: Tell Me A Story
For the final hour, everyone was given time to work on individual story projects or extend a pass-it-on story.

Here are some helpful resources:

• Scratch cards
• Story builder activities from the Scratch Curriculum Guide
• Scratch website
• Sample storytelling projects
• More Scratch story projects

We encourage you to add your projects to the BLC 2012 Scratch gallery. 

Happily Ever After
Here are a few suggestions for next steps:

• Share projects! - Upload your projects on the Scratch website and add them to the BLC2012 gallery.
• Explore resources! - Find lesson plans, activities, handouts, and other Scratch materials in our Resources section.
• Connect with others! - Connect with other BLCers or find educators local to you by searching in our Members section.
• Get updates! - Follow ScratchEd Team on Twitter and Facebook to stay informed on the latest Scratch news or events.
• Contact us! - We'd love to hear from you or answer any questions. Drop us a note at scratched@scratch.mit.edu. 

Find out what happened during the afternoon game design session.