Mrs. Malone’s class has truly enjoyed having genius hour this year. In fact, the previously scheduled hour turned into a genius week! That’s the nice thing about having the students in the lab – I have much more flexibility with the curriculum.
Because of the music, computer, art rotation, last Friday was the final time that Mrs. Malone’s class came to me. So I decided another genius hour was needed!
I gave more parameters this time because I wanted the focus to be on coding. But they still had several choices:
Only one student asked to do something different – she really wanted to draw and that was okay. For the others, I provided any materials they needed and let them go. They did a great job!
I was especially thrilled to watch the ones who chose Makey Makey. I was available to help but let them make all the necessary connections. The response of one student was, “I really want one of these to do at home.” That’s what makes this worthwhile! ☺
Every year our school has an auction and the teachers are encouraged to provide some type of activity for bidding. In the past, I’ve always done a “TechnoWizard of the Day” where a student plans and teaches the classes that come to the lab.
This year I decided to offer something different. It was open to five students who would come in after school for an hour of tech activities.
Four terrific third graders and one stupendous 2nd grader bid on the item and joined me last Friday for a fun afternoon.
As usual, I had TOO much planned but that’s okay, we had lots of fun. We started with the Hopscotch app and downloaded and Etch-a-sketch program. The children were encouraged to experiment with the variables in the script blocks to change the way the program responded.
Clearing the Screen!
Next, we moved to Scratch to create a maze and then it was on to the Makey Makey boards to control our project. We also used a pre-made Scratch piano and playdoh to hook that up to make music.
Here is a glimpse at our quick afternoon of coding!
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.
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:
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).
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 –
Scratch 2.0 is now out and it looks to be a very good upgrade. One of my goals this summer was to become more familiar with Scratch so that I could more effectively share it with my 4th graders. So, I was thrilled to discover the Creative Computing Online Workshop; a six-week course for those who want to learn more about using Scratch in the classroom.
The course started on Monday, June 3. Unfortunately, I was on vacation with my laptop and NO internet access! All I could do was read the multitude of posts coming through on my phone. It was very frustrating! Of course, the purpose of the vacation was to relax! So, upon arriving home today, I started working on this week’s projects.
Karen Brennan, along with several others, designed this course and if this week is any indication, it is going to be extremely useful in helping me learn how to better use Scratch with students.
One of our activities was an “About Me” project. Yes, mine is very simple but I was able to successfully use the broadcast block which has given me trouble before.
I’m looking forward to the upcoming weeks. It will be a challenge but I can tell much learning will be taking place!
This week, one class of 4th graders was introduced to Scratch, the programming language developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten at MIT. Scratch is intended for ages 8 to 16.
As the Scratch Educators page says, “Scratch is designed with learning and education in mind. As young people create and share projects in Scratch, they develop important design and problem-solving skills, learning how to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively.”
The students had seen the link to Scratch in their 4th grade folders but I hadn’t said anything about it. A couple had already done some exploring and discovered they could draw things but hadn’t yet figured out that they could make the sprites move! So, when I mentioned Wednesday that we would learn about Scratch the following day, there was a good deal of interest.
The next day I started out by having the students open Scratch then come to the floor to watch the following video.
Upon returning to their seats, it was all I could do to keep the students’ attention as I tried to guide them through creating the cat to move! They were SO excited. We did some basic blocks (move 10 steps, forever loop, change costume) then I let them loose. They spent the next 15 minutes exploring and seeing what they could get their sprite to do. I felt like I had lost complete control but while watching them, decided they needed the exploration time more than they needed me talking!
The next day, several of the students excitedly reported that their parents had downoaded Scratch at home. When others heard that, they wanted to know exactly how to find the program so that they could also get it. Everyone was eager to start class, so we began by building onto the dancing cat program started the day before by adding a speech bubble and a color change.
Before letting them explore, I wanted to show the pen down block. Everyone chose a ball then we added the following blocks: move 10 steps, if on edge bounce, pen down, change pen color by 10, forever loop, and clear. The students experimented with how to make the ball bounce in various ways so that it didn’t always move in the same direction.
When class was over, I asked the students to save and shut down the computers. There was no response! After several requests, I finally asked, “By your lack of response, am I to assume that you are enjoying this activity?” The answer was a resounding, “YES!”
The exciting thing about Scratch is how it draws in even the most reluctant learners. Everyone was eager to experiment with the sprites and the blocks. There was a healthy buzz as students offered suggestions to each other; lots of problem-solving going on!
I was fortunate to be able to attend another workshop at MIT at the Lifelong Kindergarten Media Lab called Happily Ever After: Digital Storytelling with Scratch. Scratch is a programming language designed for students ages 8 and up. It reinforces mathematical skills, promotes problem solving, and encourages collaboration. We spent the morning collaborating and creating. We were told that we would be pushed out of our comfort zone, and we were! One activity was to work with a partner to create a story. After 10 minutes or so, we had to move to the next computer and continue that particular story. Again, after a few minutes, we moved on. By the time we returned to our laptop, our story was completely different! Although we hadn’t been “taught” the function of each set of blocks, this was a great way to learn quite a bit about Scratch. As we arrived at each new station we really had to do some quick investigating to determine how the scripts worked. This helped us learn more about how to put the blocks together to get the sprites to respond the way we wanted. Next, we were given about an hour to work on whatever we chose. Since attending the Scratch workshop last year, I’ve struggled with how to work with the broadcast blocks so I worked on an interactive story. Didn’t finish, but that’s okay. I’m just pleased that I was able to come up with a simple story with different backgrounds! We had a “show and tell” time which would also be a great way for students to share ideas with others. I can’t wait to introduce Scratch to students!
Scratch, developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab, is a programming language created for children ages 8 and up. After working with 4th graders for the past few weeks, I’ve decided that children’s brains are much more capable of learning Scratch than mine is! However, after watching the collaboration and problem-solving that occurs when students use this program, I know Scratch is worth teaching. So, I have to try to stay a step ahead. Look on the Web 2.0 page to find links to some very helpful Scratch sites.
Here are some photos taken at the MIT Media Lab when I attended an Introduction to Scratch workshop last July.
