Scratch

Wow. That's ambitious! I can't say that that I know anything about teaching teachers how to teach, but I'll give it some thought. I hope you're charging for your services, given your preeminence in the field 

I expect a line extending back to Bangor...

I guess as a threshold matter I would start right out paralleling Mitchel in his keynote talk,  illustrating the low floor and high ceiling by showing actual representative projects (I think there is a continuing perception that the ceiling is about one foot off the floor). This is likely to capture the imagination of the spectrum of people in your audience, viz.: teachers who see the scratch-cat-rotating-with-a-bouncing-ball projects as perfect for teaching their second graders about the basics, and teachers who see your sailing-through-Maine project as something aspirational for tweenagers.

Last edited by chalkmarrow (2008-08-08 22:38:37)

bart9032 wrote:

Paddle2See wrote:

Does anybody have a curriculum or curriculum ideas for a 20 to 40 hour course in Scratch they would like to share?  The intended audience would be teachers interested in using Scratch in the Classroom.

Whats the point if kids use it at school but they had it home before the teachers introduce them though?

Through my own discussions, the majority of kids (something like 90%) in my area are not yet using Scratch and, in fact, have never heard of it.  Introducing teachers to it is just another way to get the word out.  In addition, teachers are more likely to be accepting of Scratch for schoolwork use if they understand it themselves.  Finally, teachers are often looking for specialized educational applications that apply to their own fields;  Scratch could be the tool they are looking for.

As a starting point, I'd first of all look at teh exisiting curriculum and see if there is something currently covered that scratch might do better.

For example, in the UK curiculum in year 3 (7-8 yrs) there is an introduction to control ssytems that, currently, almost everyone currently teaches using "logo" or a derivative therof.

That's an obvious candidate for being superceded by Scratch.

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Usign scratch to replace the exisitng curriculum products can go outside of the ICT class, as well. Your need to have introduced scratch first, but you can show the teachers some of the sample book reports that chn have produced and submitted.

I've also seen teaching units where teh chn have to create their own, short, "choose your own adventure" book, somethign that could be translated into scratch very easily. 

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I'm keen - should I start teaching slightly older classes in teh future - to employ a cross curricular approach where (for example) we write a script in English class, draw the characters in art class and then animate the story using scratch in ICT.

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Finally - let the teachers know that if they themselves start getting interested in scratch, they can use it to produce simple interactive resources to use in teaching, customised to their own classes.

I've used it to teach directions (directions game 1 and 2), past tense endings (Ed the cat), RE (the cleansing of the temple) and counting in 10ps (coin counting game), and may also use it in the future in the ICT "introduction to modelling" unit.

As soon as I get around to writing a scratch simulation of growing a plant, that is  .

Did you get your hands on a curriculum. I am starting in a middle school and for the first session essentially used the Introductory session from the support page with some of the projects by ffred and myself.

You know we should develop one in Scratch! The paper and web stuff is boring. We should have Scratchie teach Scratch to teachers and students and show them little bits of different projects. What do you think? I love these types of recursions. Teching with the tool that you want to teach. This will make Escher happy!

There is quite a library of "how-to" work already done, lots of it by kids.  Various people have their own galleries of good teaching project examples.  The MIT folks gathered and leveled sets of sample projects for the Scratch project folder.  What if there were a set of teaching projects put together in the same way, starting a forum thread where people nominate projects for inclusion?  Or a set of increasingly complext curriculum integration challenges in various subjects?

Karen

Hmm.  What is it that would make this work, or what agreements can we make about what people are interested in having first? Then we can figure out the technology to support it.  When they assemble the sample projects folders, the nominations happened in the forum, but assembling and sharing is outside of the website context.  Maybe the educator web site underway has the potential to do this organizing.  The resources field Karen showed at the conference looked more flexible than galleries.

Here's what I'm interested in.  How does that fit what you are discussing?
--Tutorials about Scratch programming techniques, in a series of advancing challenge levels

--Projects that demonstrate the application of specific ideas in Scratch clearly, maybe even with on-screen code examples

--Scratch projects challenge assignments, which help student discover Scratch programming techniques on their own

I also am looking to develop a much less amditious course this summer (with my wife who is a teacher). I am planning for a 2-4 hour session of 'teach the teacher' to cover scratch (especially broadcast) with tips on lesson plans (ie the curriculum) and 'teacher stuff' on how to get the kids interested. We plan six starter lessons for kids.

I already have some projects and notes at http://www.redware.com/scratch and there are extensive notes at http://www.learnscratch.org (they will post you a cd-rom for free) and also the scratch website notes.

A (very draft) outline off the top of my head for the kids is:
1. Draw a sprite and move around the stage.
2. Turtle graphics.
3. A simple game.
4. Costumes/Sounds and backgrounds.
5. Multiple sprites and broadcast.
6. A storyboard multi-media application.

The last two lessons would be project based with sample projects for them to try and manage. For older children I would incorporate Lego Mindstorms or WeDo and perhaps the BYOB version of scratch for more advanced programming.

Regarding teach the teacher - on the Scracth side I think that broadcast is the single concept that they find difficult after playing with scratch for an hour or so and I would focus on this plus maybe the mechanics of pasting a jpg into a backgound, recording a sound, loading an mp3 and so on.

Are most of the people on this thread in the UK ? One issue is linking the material into the curriculum otherwise teachers are constrained to the computer club rather than the classroom. My wife has been teaching scratch two hours a week this term to youngsters and found bits of the curriculum to base it around - but the other teachers are not jumping at the bit so teaching the teacher is very important.

Last edited by redware (2009-07-16 15:37:19)

Currently, I am looking at the possibility of coming up with a curriculum to teach Secondary School students programming using Scratch. The curriculum is targeted at teenagers with weaker academic ability. It forms a module in the curriculum stretched across 3 years. Seems very ambitious, but if it works, I think it'll do the kids a lot of good.

I don't think we will be touching on variables as it may confuse many of them. Not so sure if we should include pen as we think that it may not be that relevant in programming. What do you folks think?

hscheong wrote:

Currently, I am looking at the possibility of coming up with a curriculum to teach Secondary School students programming using Scratch. The curriculum is targeted at teenagers with weaker academic ability. It forms a module in the curriculum stretched across 3 years. Seems very ambitious, but if it works, I think it'll do the kids a lot of good.

I don't think we will be touching on variables as it may confuse many of them. Not so sure if we should include pen as we think that it may not be that relevant in programming. What do you folks think?

Personally, I think that the pen is very important.
For those struggling academically, one of the best ways to teach them programming is let them see directly how their code affects the program. Motion blocks, I think we'll all agree, are the best ways to do this. And the pen allows for tracking of the motion. Personally, when I was learning scratch, I too had trouble with the pen. But what I didn't have then was a 'crash course' in its use. If you tell them how to put it up, down, clear, and explain that it follows the sprite, they will soon grasp the colour, size, etc blocks.

I agree about the variables: these are hard to learn. And don't even consider lists!

Umm, concepts...

X and Y movement
variables
brodcasting