Posts Tagged ‘professional development’

Creative Computing with Scratch

In May I discovered an online course – Creative Computing Online Workshop, (CCOW), designed and facilitated by members of the ScratchEd Team at Harvard University. Over the past couple of years, I’ve been working with 4th graders on the very basics of Scratch, a programming language designed for ages 8 and up. However, the basics were about all I could do! One of my goals this summer had been to practice Scratch so when I learned about the course, I immediately signed up.

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The About Scratch page describes Scratch:

With Scratch, you can program your own interactive stories, games, and animations — and share your creations with others in the online community.

Scratch helps young people learn to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively — essential skills for life in the 21st century.

Scratch is a project of the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab. It is provided free of charge.

Back to the course – the workshop was 6 weeks long and well-worth the time spent! The first three weeks were fast and furious; learning more and more about the power of Scratch. I quickly realized that, although this was a program designed for children, my non-analytical mind just couldn’t grasp everything as quickly as I’d hoped. At one point I became so frustrated that I was ready to quit! I’m glad I stuck with it! We were supposed to be looking at other design notebooks and leaving feedback and it was all I could do just to keep up with each week’s assignments.

Fortunately, the ScratchEd team AND the CCOW community were absolutely fantastic! From the excellent how-to videos to the “office hours” to each week’s activities, the designers of this workshop guided us to the point where we were ready to create a final project to share with our fellow CCOWers. I can’t say enough about the community of learners! There were beginners all the way to expert programmers who easily created amazing Scratch projects! And, then there was me – plodding along, not able to figure out why something didn’t work . . . But my fellow workshop members were ALWAYS available to fix issues, answer my “why” questions, and offer guidance on how to feel more comfortable using Scratch.

Throughout the six weeks, we kept a design notebook describing our thoughts, practice projects, and finally, our final project.

My project was three-fold:

  1. Continue practicing Scratch projects. (I struggled with some projects that I just couldn’t get to work but I was particularly proud of a multiplication and addition game – thanks to lots of help from the CCOW community).
  2. Collect resources and create a Scratch Resources LiveBinder.
  3. Make some new Scratch cards to use with my students.

Although I didn’t progress as quickly as I’d hoped (As I mentioned before, programming baffles me!), I am definitely further along than before taking the course. This was challenging but one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve ever had! I am excited to use Scratch again with my students and now feel that I can do a much better job guiding them to ask questions and problem-solve with each other.

I did learn something important. Normally, learning comes easily for me but this time it didn’t. It’s important to share with children the struggles that occur in the learning process – how important it is to ask for help, to share ideas, to understand that sometimes you just have to step away for a bit, that learning is ongoing!

Now that the CCOW workshop is over, my learning won’t stop. I know it will takes LOTS of practice to feel confident with Scratch. I’m now enjoying having the time to examine the many projects created by my fellow CCOWers. What I’ve seen so far is superb! As I titled my final project

Image from Haiku Deck

Image from Haiku Deck

The TVS Version of the Genius Bar!

Our tech committee tried something new this year and we were thrilled with the response! Before school began, all faculty received an iPad. Of course, everyone was at a different skill level. Some needed just a little help with the “how to” aspect of various apps that were installed on their iPad. Others weren’t sure where to begin; not even knowing which questions to ask!

One of the members of our committee, Melissa Burkhead, suggested that we offer a “Genius Bar” based on the services offered at Apple Stores. Melissa bought shirts for us and someone scrambled around, searching for those Apple stickers that come in the iPad box. On the day of the event, we arrived in our “uniform” (thoroughly confusing students – “You work at the Apple store?”).

It was decided that we would have several “stations” set up in our library so that faculty and staff could go where they felt would serve them best. The stations were:

  1. Apps
  2. Pictures
  3. Video/Facetime/Skype
  4. Music
  5. Basic
  6. Basic
  7. Basic
  8. Intermediate
  9. Intermediate

We deliberately had several basic stations so that we could offer more individualized help. Although we had specific assignments, anyone could go to any station to receive help in whatever area they needed. We all answered all types of questions! (more…)