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Reflections on Scratch Educator Meetup @ MIT: Saturday, March 9, 2013

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ScratchEd Team
Administrator
March 12, 2013

Thanks to everyone who joined us for the March 2013 Scratch Educator Meetup! Here are some reflections from the event:

Attendees
Below is a list of people who attended the meetup on Saturday:

To connect with someone from the meetup, click on their name above and leave a message on their profile page.

Recap

  • Networking: Who's Here? Tag Cloud - At the beginning of the meetup, attendees participated in a self-tagging, ice-breaker activity. Each person wrote on their nametag four to five keywords that described themselves and their work. Participants were then asked to share their tags on a whiteboard, which served as our collective meetup tag cloud. The activity was used to help facilitate networking and to give a sense of who was at the event.
  • Introductions - During introductions, people shared their names, where they are from, and their past experiences using Scratch.
  • Breakout Sessions - After a round of think-pair-share brainstorming, two types of breakout sessions emerged: hands-on explorations of Scratch 2.0 and WeDo sensors, and a discussion around how to support diverse learners (students and teachers) in using Scratch. Since everyone expressed interested to both breakouts, we decided to spend most of morning playing with Scratch and the LEGO WeDo Construction Kit, and to then to hold a big group discussion over lunch. During the hands-on session, Cindy led a small group in thinking about how to introduce students to the WeDo sensors, while others explored some of new features in Scratch 2.0, coming with different ways to tackle a maze challenge.
  • Show & Tell - Two educators demonstrated recently created Scratch projects during Show & Tell, which was held at the beginning of a delicious lunch of Chipotle burritos and chips with guacamole. Lorraine shared a large-scale, collaborative Scratch project involving her students and other international classrooms. Derek, who was inspired by the last meetup's design challenge, described how he used the new cloning feature in Scratch 2.0 to produce an amazing space invaders game replica. You can watch videos of the Show & Tell presentations on ScratchEd.
  • Group Discussion - After Show & Tell, Michelle led a whole-group discussion around lesson plan ideas and strategies for supporting both students and teachers learning about Scratch. You can read about what was shared and continue the conversation on the discussion notes page.
  • Photos - Check out photos from the meetup on Flickr.

Resources

Do you have any other reflections, questions, or suggestions about the meetup? Please share them as a comment below.

Want to attend the next meetup? Sign up for any of our upcoming meetups at http://scratched.media.mit.edu/events