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Getting the Itch with Scratch

Contributed by Ashley Lee, November 21, 2009
Parker discusses some of the difficulties students face in transitioning from Scratch to more advanced programming languages, and suggests how the instructor can support this transition.
  • Original Author: Jeff Parker
  • Education Level: College and University, Professional Development
  • Content Types: Advocacy Material, Presentation, Website
  • Curricular Areas: Computer Science, Engineering, Language Arts, Mathematics, Music, Science, Social Studies, Teacher Education, Technology, Visual Arts, Other
  • Keywords: overview, conference, Scratch@MIT

Presentation Overview


Scratch provides an inviting way to present programming concepts to students without prior programming experience. Students can write applications that use decisions and repetition within an hour. Concepts that seem natural in Scratch are harder to duplicate in procedural languages. While it is easy to write a loop to move an image in 10 steps, a loop in a procedural language needs a loop condition, usually implemented with a loop variable that needs to be initialized and incremented. In this session, we discuss some of the hurdles students face in making the transition from Scratch to general languages, and suggest some areas that the instructor needs to clarify.

 

Attached below are presentation slides from the Scratch@MIT 2008 conference.

Resource Files
Other Files: 
application/vnd.ms-powerpoint iconScratch.ppt
Links: 
Scratch@MIT Wiki : Friday130
Scratch@MIT 2008 Wiki