Scratch

The actual pedagogy will not be very different - the changes will be in class management. 

You need to capture their interest very early.

They will, however, be capable of listening for longer and processing longer chains of instructions, so you might be able to combine single steps that you would teach to younger children into "batches" of 2-3.

They will also be more able to follow written instructions so you could supply more of those to enable them to work independently.

It will be best if you can combine their interests from another lesson/pastime, too.  Maybe concentrate on the animation side of scratch by getting them to create a short script for an animation before the scratch lessons begin?

Last edited by Mayhem (2009-07-12 07:39:35)

(Might be off topic.)
Paddle, my friend (not on Scratch) is in a computer class in High School I think, and they're teaching Alice, and some of his classmates have used Scratch before and say it's better than Alice, but I also told him that Alice can do more things.

Hello,
I am in the middle of teaching a summer enrichment camp to 11-13 year olds(10 of them) using scratch. I originally thought of using ALice, but being able to share and move files around on the scratch website was huge for us. I found success in doing little mini lessons around things such as broadcasting,etc - then I would give them all a mini challenge. I would take another persons project - strip it down to just the main character, then say you have 1 hour to give me your best animation/game that can do this, this and this. They would get to work, then ask questions like how do I do a timer, etc and this has worked very well. I have 2 weeks, at 3 hours a day, but it is working well. Let them explore others projects for a bit here and there for inspiration.
Good Luck

I'll have one week at 3 hours a day.  Motivation to learn scratch won't be a problem, since they are all signing up voluntarily—I won't have to deal with those who have absolutely no interest (unless their parents sign them up for the free class just to get them out of the house).

I was figuring on spending the first day on basics: navigating the scratch panels, doing simple motions at the level of the Scratch cards, talking about costume-change and movement as alternatives for doing animation, and so forth.

After that, I was not sure whether to go with specific assignments (games or animations) or just to turn the kids loose and answer "how do I ..." questions.  Obviously, I can ask the kids what they would like, but if they want specific assignments or partially completed projects, I'll have more prep work to do.  For the drop-in classes I've done in the past with elementary-school kids, I just let the kids play and answered how-to questions.  Some never got beyond simple movies with straight-line code, putting most of their effort into making costumes, others used most of the control constructs. 

I'm also not sure how far to go with math:
do I show them how to convert directions into vectors? (probably not, as at most one or two will have had trig)
do I show them how to do realistic physics for gravity? (maybe—it isn't much harder than cartoon gravity, though I'll have to be careful not to use the calculus-based explanations I used with my son.)

Do I give them lots of snippets of code to build their own projects from, or do I let them define what they want to do first, then help them come up with programming solutions?

Do I show them how to do moderately complex things in scratch (like continuous scrolling) or do I stick with basics?

I suppose a lot will depend on how much previous programming experience they have, which I really don't know at this point.

I will have one "teaching assistant"—my son, who has more experience with Scratch than me, though his projects have tended to be somewhat less complicated code, since I've mainly taken on projects that try to stretch the limits of scratch.

You should build your lessons around 2 aspects:

1) A final project
2) Learning the skills that will allow them to make said project.

So - show them a game - a maze-chase game or a simple shooter or simple platformer.
Show them a couple of advanced examples of the same thing, from the site.

Then, lesson by lesson set them a mini challenge that will teach them one of the things they will need to make the final game.

So - if your main project was to be a maze -chase game, then:
Day 1, Intro etc, and let them play with some scratch creations.  Choose as a group the style of game they are going to make.  Design the sprites and background for the game.

Day 2 - Learn about keyboard input by challenging them to make a character move around the screen using the arrow keys.  Then, challenge them to do it *without* the "when X pressed".  Can they see advantages/disadvantages to each method.

Day 3 - Learn about barriers - how to stop a character moving OR collision detection for shooting/dying, depending on the game they have chosen.  Challenge them to do it with colour detection, and with sprite detection.  Can they see advantages/disadvantages to each method?

Day 4 - Learn about either shooting, moving an enemy to chase the player, or gravity and jumping (depending on the type of game chosen.

Day 5 - use the skills they have gained to create their final game.

I agree with Magnie that Mayhem's suggestions have been the most directly useful so far.

I will certainly spend some time on the first day showing off a number of existing Scratch projects, and getting the students to choose what sort of project they want to do.

I'll probably spend some time after the Monday class looking for simple examples of the sort of project that the students asked to work on, to give them ideas for starting with.

The class went fairly well, and the projects have been posted to http://scratch.mit.edu/galleries/view/55588

There were 5 days at 3 hours a day.  I only spent about 10-30 minutes a day lecturing (usually in 2-5 minute bursts an hour apart).  The rest of the time was spent with the kids exploring scratch on their own and asking for help.  My son and I were kept fairly busy the first day answering questions, but later in the week we were able to spend more of our time creating demos that could be incorporated into student projects.  For example, we created three demo "health bar" implementations, two of which were incorporated into the SpaceBlasters! game. 

I think that most of the kids had fun, and that some of them will continue with Scratch programming for a while.

Mayhem wrote:

You should build your lessons around 2 aspects:

1) A final project
2) Learning the skills that will allow them to make said project.

So - show them a game - a maze-chase game or a simple shooter or simple platformer.
Show them a couple of advanced examples of the same thing, from the site.

Then, lesson by lesson set them a mini challenge that will teach them one of the things they will need to make the final game.

So - if your main project was to be a maze -chase game, then:
Day 1, Intro etc, and let them play with some scratch creations.  Choose as a group the style of game they are going to make.  Design the sprites and background for the game.

Day 2 - Learn about keyboard input by challenging them to make a character move around the screen using the arrow keys.  Then, challenge them to do it *without* the "when X pressed".  Can they see advantages/disadvantages to each method.

Day 3 - Learn about barriers - how to stop a character moving OR collision detection for shooting/dying, depending on the game they have chosen.  Challenge them to do it with colour detection, and with sprite detection.  Can they see advantages/disadvantages to each method?

Day 4 - Learn about either shooting, moving an enemy to chase the player, or gravity and jumping (depending on the type of game chosen.

Day 5 - use the skills they have gained to create their final game.

Wow! Recently I had been planning on how I would teach a group of people and you basically summarized my ideas!

Last edited by demosthenes (2009-08-14 10:55:58)