Scratch
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#1 2008-07-01 19:36:25
- Paddle2See
- Scratch Team
- Registered: 2007-10-27
- Posts: 1000+
Scratch Handouts for Lecture?
I've promised to give a lecture on Scratch to a group of 9-14 year old students at a Robotics Camp. My goal is not to teach a lot of Scratch, but rather to get them intrigued enough to go home, fire up their computers and try it out for themselves. I'm curious if anybody else has developed any material targeted for this sort of a presentation. Any thoughts on good approachs to the talk would also be appreciated.
My current plan is to briefly introduce the Scratch development environment, maybe spend 20 minutes or so building a small project in front of them and then switching over to showing a bunch of pre-built projects of a variety of different types. Finally, a brief introduction to the Scratch web site.
I'm thinking that it would be good to have a take-away document that lists the Scratch web site, some expanation of what Scratch is all about (to generate interest) and then some simple download/getting started instructions.
Any feedback on any of this would be appreciated. Thanks!
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#2 2008-07-01 19:42:19
Re: Scratch Handouts for Lecture?
Well if you want to get them interested, show them stuff like archkinght adventure and all of those immensly popular games. Kids will respond well to those things.
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#4 2008-07-02 02:20:37
Re: Scratch Handouts for Lecture?
What about the Getting Started guide or some Scratch Cards?
http://scratch.mit.edu/howto
In my experience with kids of that age having them to look at the projector for more than 5 minutes is hard. I tend to do a quick demo in 5 minutes by making the cat spin, put my own picture, do some effects to make my face look funny and then show some advanced proejcts. After that I let them explore Scratch on their own computer.
In your case you might not have computers for everyone, so if you want to build a project with them it should be really engaging and you should involve them in every step by giving options like: "do you want a cat or a dog?", "should the dog chase the cat or viceversa?".
Good luck! I'm curious to know how it goes!
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#5 2008-07-02 05:29:29
- Paddle2See
- Scratch Team
- Registered: 2007-10-27
- Posts: 1000+
Re: Scratch Handouts for Lecture?
Thanks for all the feedback! You all have some good points for me to ponder.
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