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Scratch Cards for All

Contributed by Amitai Gat, October 15, 2010
Scratch Cards for all free of Charge
  • Original Author: Amitai Gat
  • Education Level: Preschool and Kindergarten, Elementary School, Middle School, High School, College and University, Professional Development, Other
  • Content Types: Activity, Handout, Tutorial, Website
  • Curricular Areas: Computer Science, Engineering, Language Arts, Mathematics, Music, Science, Social Studies, Teacher Education, Technology, Visual Arts, Other
  • Keywords: scratch cards

The big day has arrived. After nine months of development and another two months of rigorous translation to English, my Scratch Cards are yours for free.
This project, that started as a graduation project in the Department for Instructional Systems Technologies at Holon Institute of Technology, Holon Israel, has been presented in August at the Scratch@MIT conference in MIT, Boston.
Based on the feedback from the visitors at the conference, I've decided to distribute these cards free of charge to the benefit of Scratch users, adults and children alike.
These cards are self paced Scratch course that covers everything from basic orientation to the software interface up to advanced programming concepts such as variables, counters, arrays and Math operators.
You can either go from one card to the other, use them as reference for specific needs, or as stand alone assignment for your class or yourself to learn.

So far these cards has been released in Hebrew and English, future planned versions are Spanish, Swedish and Danish, if you wish to help translate these cards to your own language, let me know and I will send you a Word file with all the explanation, headings and other text objects, after translation, send back the Word file and I will compose a new version free of charge.

For more details got to my blog

Sincirally,

Amitai Gat

Resource Files
Other Files: 
application/pdf iconActivity Cards - English.pdf
application/pdf iconActivity Cards - Hebrew.pdf
application/msword iconText to translate.doc
Comments
Amitai Gat
Member
October 30, 2010

Here's a link to the word document with all the Cards Explanations for those of you who wants to give a hand and translate.

Thanks in advance,

Amitai

 

 

 

Ana Fonseca
Member
October 30, 2010

Hello!

Need anyone to translate it into Portuguese? I'm a tranlator, ICT teacher trainer and EFL teacher.

Heard of Scratch as I was taking a masters course (year one) and am studying the program to see if I can use it for language teaching.

Read you soon!

Ana

Vera De Leon
Member
October 28, 2010

God!!!.. 

Bruce!!!!!!... it is so exciting to know about your experiences, I can't wait for the Spanish Version. Thanks for sharing your experience with all of us...

 

Have a very nice day :D

 

Vera de Leon

México

Bruce Cichowlas
Member
October 25, 2010

Here's a bit of a review and a description of my experiences today with the cards:

 

I had a very positive experience today using Amitai's Scratch Cards with my 4th-5th grade class of four girls, five boys.  I plan to repeat it, slightly modified, with my 2nd-3rd grade class of six girls, five boys on Wednesday.  This year I am teaching only Scratch.  Another teacher teaches typing, word processing and such weekly.  I had some hesitations, mostly based on the nature of my classes, but it really worked out very well.  At the end of the first class, I called in the primary teacher of the children and she was impressed with what they had made and went from computer to computer looking at the projects.  So I'd give these cards my endorsement and for those considering helping Amitai to translate them to other languages, I think it would be a worthwhile thing to do.

I run my class as a workshop with one child at each computer.  It is a small rectangular room and the computers are against two walls, eight on one, two on the other.  With this room geometry, it is hard to stand at the front of the children and teach in a conventional way.  It is more as if I am among them than in front of them.

Scratch teaching, workshop style, entails some special challenges.  In my school, we believe at letting every child progress at their own pace and I personally believe in letting them approach Scratch in individual ways.  Thus no two children are doing the same thing and frequently several are asking insistently for help at the same time.  (I've gotten better this year at suggesting that one student help another with something and that has gone better than expected.)

So one of the things that is great about Amitai's cards is that they provide supplementary help on various Scratch topics and the students don't need me quite as much with their questions.  Another great thing is the lively presentation of the cards.  I also think it is great that the figure on the cards is a modern girl.  The boys never need much help connecting with the idea of Scratch, but sometimes the girls find it harder to think that Scratch is made for them as well.  I think the female figure on the card helps to convey that Scratch is a fun, relevant thing for girls to do.

There are eighteen cards that break down into three group:  three, ten and five.  The groups suggest different difficulty levels.  Amitai has also been helpful in indicating a difficulty level from one to three on most of the cards.  (A few of the first cards have no difficulty levels.  Amitai, does this indicate a difficulty easier than difficulty one?)

My kids are of differing Scratch abilites.  Some did it last year; others didn't.  Some also do some Scratch at home; most don't.  Some have little experience.  One kid has experience in Flash and Actionscript.  Because of this and also because of the independent, assertive spirit of many of the children, I decided to take a very flexible approach.  I didn't have time to laminate the cards as Amitai suggests, but instead I printed several copies (two-sided) of each card on thicker than average paper.  I told the students that they were to do three Scratch cards of their choice starting with at least one today (in our 45 minute session).  I said that there would be a special prize for those that did five cards.  (I haven't figured out what this is yet.)  Of course, I suspect if they like the cards, they will want to complete the series.

I also said they could select whatever cards they wanted.  I expected a drift to the easiest cards, but it didn't work that way.  In fact, some kids were attracted to cards that I thought would be hard for them and I encouraged them to start with an easier card.

I said that when they were finished, they were to post their project to the Scratch website and to be sure to include the card number in the project name somewhere.  Last year, we had some difficulty with the online issue with parents, but this year I do it this way:  We all use a common last name.  (This year it is Brit, though some are using Waof, which was our common name last year.)  Then most use their actual first name with it, but if they are not comfortable with doing that, I let them select a different first name, as long as I know what it is.  We use a common password for my convenience in administration and my email is the email on all of the accounts.  (If I get into problems with everybody knowing one another's password, I'll assign individual passwords, but so far it has been alright.)  One of the benefits of doing things this way is that I can easily check all the projects on my own time some time before their next lesson.  Another big advantage is that it lets me organize projects together easily into galleries to try to pique the interests of the parents.

The students were really quite proud of the work they were doing using the cards.  I am appreciative that Amitai worded the requirements loose enough that the students could easily add a lot of their own creativity (and there was quite a bit of that).  The session went so well that I invited their "homeroom" teacher in to see what they had made.  She went from computer to computer and the students were pleased to show their work.  Later, I had some difficulty in getting the students to leave for their next class, though I do give a five-minute warning for students to save their work.

I think I'll do the same Wednesday with my 2nd-3rd grade class but will only show the first nine cards or so, in order to prevent students picking cards that would frustrate them.  I can always introduce the other cards later.

If only teaching were like this all the time.

Bruce Cichowlas
The Brighton School
360 Water Street
Framingham, MA, USA 01701
bruce@cichowlas.org

 

Claire Caine
Member
October 25, 2010

 Hello Amitai.

I would like to use these cards, but I need to make some edits on them first. Is there a doc file that you could send me? It is very time-consuming to try to edit them as JPEGs. I also sent this message to your gmail account, so feel free to reply from there.

Claire

Vera De Leon
Member
October 20, 2010

Hello!.. trat's great!!... if you guys need anything let me know :D

 

Take care :)

Amitai Gat
Member
October 19, 2010

Hola Senora Vera,

I have sent the word file to two persons who speaks spanish, so I guess, we both depend on them to progress, I hope they will do it soon.

Check in with me in about two weeks and if no progress will be made by then, I'll forward the Word file for your to translate.

Thank you for your comment.

Amitai

 

Vera De Leon
Member
October 19, 2010

Hello Amitai, how are you?.. this is Vera from Casa Telmex in México, we met at the Scratch Conference last august, I was looking for resources because I'll have some Scratch workshops soon... and.... I saw your Scratch Cards and I was excited... but... then.. I realized "those Scratch Cards are in English", hahahahaha... aawwww!!!

 

Anyway, hahahahaha,,,, I would like to help to translate them to Spanish, you let me know what I have to do...

 

Have a nice day  and thanks for sharing your Scratch Cards.

Amitai Gat
Member
October 17, 2010

Added a Digital copy of the cards to my site, for you guys, who don't want to print or can't print.

Amitai

Michelle Choi
Member
October 14, 2010

Hi Amitai,

Thanks for sharing. Your hard work is appreciated.

Michelle