Bring SCRATCH to Illinois!!!
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Hi, I am Adam Slade, a graduate student in Public Policy and Adminstration at Northwestern University. I am a researcher for the IIlinois Economic Recovery Commission. This commission was set up so we could make recommendations to improve education to the IL governor. We are thinking of possibly doing a demo of Scratch for IL officials to increase its exposure and as a way to demonstrate how classrooms can use innovative programs in teaching. Is there any input from an educator/school adminstrator perspective about your experiences with Scratch that would be helpful? I have a few guiding questions... How it SCRATCH used by students? (in the curriculum, after school, supplementary work?) Are there ways of guiding students in the use of the program you have found helpful? Is there any training that needs to occur in the school to allow SCRATCH to be used? Are there any recommendations for distribution on a macro scale? Are there any adminstrative issues when using/implementing Scratch in school? Is this program of interest to teachers/administrators and do you think it would be well received by teachers from different areas around the state? Any other thoughts? I appreciate any insight you can provide. Thanks a lot!
It's great to hear about your interest in using Scratch in classroom activities in Illinois.
I talked about Scratch at the Illinois Computing Educators (ICE) conference a couple years ago, and I met lots of teachers doing creative work with Scratch. You might be able to contact some of them through the ICE ning.
We've seen Scratch used in many different ways in classrooms. Of course, it is used in some computer-science and information-technology classes. I'm personally most interested in examples where Scratch is integrated into other curriculum areas. We've seen students use Scratch to create reports for social-studies classes, simulations for science classes, and interactive stories for English classes. As students create and share projects in Scratch, they can learn to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively -- in addition to becoming more actively engaged with particular curriculum content.
If you decide you want to learn more about Scratch, you might consider coming to our Scratch@MIT conference in August.
Best of luck with your efforts.
Mitch Resnick, MIT Scratch Team
Hi,
I teach in a middle school computer lab in NM. I have taught introduction to programming for many years using Logo. Last year was my first foray into teaching Scratch. This year, I am developing a nine week Moodle course that can be used as a blended, (some are now saying hybrid), course or strictly online. I am a certified Blackboard teacher for the state, but I like developing courses for Moodle as that is what I am used to.
Instruction is guided by the CSTA's, (Computer Science Teachers' Association), recommendations for introducing programming to the middle school, focusing on algrorithms and problem solving, (while keeping it interesting to my students). My course is developed around my state's math standards, programming employment standards, and NETS from ISTE. Students will work through a series of PBL lessons and then develop their own PBL.
Scratch goes well with labs like mine as an introduction to the career of programming. It would also fit well into Math, Language Arts, and Social Studies, (many projects are story telling). In HS, given more structure than I use, it would be an excellent introduction into a career track. In elementary, it would be a good introduction to logic. It lacks some of the development for Science that StarLogo TNG has, (see Project Guts, I am an after school club leader).
Because of my experience conducting a Scratch webinar, I think there will be a group of teachers at each school that could see how Scratch could fit into the curriculum. I hope to present my course to our NM ISTE's conference this spring.
Training for teachers could be done in a one day workshop, providing there was other support such as a wiki, online environment, etc. Wiki's are great for developing curriculum.
Once students have the basics of using Scratch, its best to turn them loose developing their own projects within a framework the instructor has developed. Basic projects can be suggested to them, but the Instructor needs to become the help desk.
Issues for use of Scratch:
I have collected a great set of references and help sites as a matter of developing my course, if you, or someone from the group you are working with wants to know more, let me know.
Carl Bogardus
Twitter: weemooseus