Skip to Content

Helping People Get Started with Scratch

Slides from Scratch@MIT that describe our approach to designing Scratch workshops

At the Scratch@MIT conference in August 2010, I gave a presentation with Mitch Resnick, describing our approach to Scratch workshop design. I've attached the presentation slides.

The talk was organized into three sections: guiding principles, organizational approaches, and evaluating success.

In the first part (guiding principles), we discussed four ideas that are central to any learning environment we design: design (having opportunities for hands-on design activities), personal interests (connecting to people's passions and interests), collaboration (enabling people to work together and have access to each other's ideas), reflection (stepping back and thinking about experiences).

In the second part (organizational approaches), we talked about how we enact these four aspects in a concrete workshop structure. The workshops usually have five components: meeting one another, introducing Scratch, creating projects, sharing experiences, and preparing for next steps. (These components are elaborated in the workshop guide.) For each component, we discussed why we include it in the workshop design (purpose) and ways that we do it (approaches).

Finally, we discussed three ways in which we evaluate the success of a workshop. We hope that people have positive design experiences in the workshop. We like to see a diversity of creations come out of the workshop. We hope that people leave with a desire to learn more, beyond the workshop. We talked through three examples of workshops that we had recently conducted and how those workshops satisfied each of those criteria.

Comments
Gihad Nader
Member

 That's great, I need to prepare a one-hour activity with scratch for high school students.

It's not a workshop but this approach will help me for sure

Thanks

Richard Anderson
Member

This is great!  I'll be leading two workshops this summer in Cameroon through a grant that I received from my school.  I have three days per workshop and am wondering what's the best way to divide the content that's in this document over three days.  This will be my first time leading a workshop.  Certainly I want to give the participants ample time to work on their own projects, but I want a good balance of instruction and discovery.  My target audience will likely be kids 12-16 years old with limited experience with technology.  They will be working in teams because I'll have a limited number of computers, probably groups of three.   I'll be documenting my entire experience and would be interested in perhaps sharing it with others at a future Scratch conference.  I went to one last year for the first time and it was fantastic.

Karen Brennan
Member

Hi Richard,

You might be interested in http://scratched.media.mit.edu/stories/what-we-did-creative-computing-2010, which describes a three-day workshop we organized for teachers. Although you're working with young people, the organization and flow of concepts might be of use.

I look forward to hearing about your experiences!

Thanks,
K

Richard Anderson
Member

 Hi Karen,

 

Thanks again for all of your help.  I recently got back from Cameroon and here is a short film about my project.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSMzXcESzlY

 

Cheers,

 

Richard

Karen Brennan
Member

Hi Richard,

The video is fantastic. It's so exciting to see the documentation that you described at the beginning of the year!

Thank you so, so much for sharing this...
K

 

Richard Anderson
Member

 You're welcome!

 

Richard

Richard Anderson
Member

Hi Karen,

 

Thank you so much!  This will be very helpful.

 

Richard

Iván Oriola
Member

I teach workshops on "Scratch" here in Madrid (Spain), for children and teachers.

I think this is very interesting and useful.

Maybe we could share some ideas and workshops programs.

Thank you very much.

Karen Brennan
Member

That would be great. I'd love to know more about what you're doing.

We'll be hosting a series of webinars this spring, with some being about workshop design. Perhaps you'd be willing to share your experiences?

Thanks!
K