Scratch

To make your projects smaller, you can click on the "Extras" menu at the top of the screen and select "compress images" and "compress sounds."

I have observed that our ESL, Indigenous primary students learn the functionality of the Scratch scripting blocks by trial and error. Even though the students can not verbalise the concepts, they can use the concepts' graphical representations to construct well functioning  programs.  By experimenting with the blocks they can grasp more complex programming concepts if  given an adequate amount of time.
Even the preschoolers started working on their little projects. By the time they reach  high school they should become confident functional programmers. Currently, they would benefit from a larger painting area though.
The older primary students like printing, analysing, experimenting and assembling the coding of their favourite projects. It would be useful to have a larger scripting area having capacity to fit more blocks.

We'll look into the upload issue. Kyrstof, is your connection there slow? I wonder if the timeout is still too short? Could you try a really tiny project size and see if the same thing happens? However, right now our server is slowed down with so much traffic, so perhaps next week. Thank you for persisting and for sharing your work and observations.

We are thinking about ways to deal with screen space more effectively. (The first verison of Scratch was completely flexible--both the size of the stage and the scripting area, and that caused a lot of issues.) As we look at screen real-estate options, Kevin, that's  a good idea to consider options for the cleanup working differently.

At Antarringinya the teaching methods were as followed:
1.    We have played an introductory video to introduce the topic and to motivate the students. As Indigenous learning styles focus on global, holistic approach, the students were given an overview of what we were going to do. In order to ensure an appropriate level of engagement the students needed to see the purpose of learning.  Using a data projector we have shown a few ready-made projects to the whole class. The students selected their favourite project which they implemented later.
2.    After demonstrating to the whole class the basic steps explaining how to create a sprite, each student has drawn and saved sprites in the paint editor applying their natural artistic abilities.
3.     We have introduced the Scratch’s working environment using a puppet show where the stage had many backgrounds which we were changing according to the scenery needed for each scene. Similarly, sprites have been explained as puppets that have to appear and disappear, and need to be controlled to perform actions including moving and uttering sounds.  We announced “the puppets for act one need to appear now�  to  apply the same actions to a number of sprites by using one command. This relates to the Scratch’s “ broadcast and receive�  concepts.  Another concept that many children found difficult to grasp was the idea of a stage being separate from sprites. Many students needed reinforcement of the concept that a stage cannot be moved like sprites (puppets) and does not have motion scripting blocks. Similarly, Antarringinya students needed additional time to grasp the notion that text is treated like a sprite and can have the same actions.
4.     We used role plays to explain the Scratch’s idea of controlling sprites.  One student directed another student using the Scratch’s scripting commands. For example, students have asked each other to move by making a number of steps in a direction as specified by the Scratch’s concept of angles, turn by a number of degrees or “go to�  using x and y co-ordinates drawn on the classroom floor.
5.    The concepts learned in the role plays have been transferred into Scratch by inserting the scripting blocks to control the sprites that have been previously drawn by the children. A simple activity was modelled on the data projector, followed by students programming their sprites, using the printed worksheets with the coding blocks of their favourite, previously selected ready-made project.
6.    Students have learnt to draw and import backgrounds for a stage with the appearing of backgrounds for a specific amount time.
7.     Each student evaluates a number of ready-made projects to  individually select one to be modified. For example some students have selected project “Tamara�  and changed the letters to implement their own names.
8.    Using data projector for the whole class the teacher modelled applying one new scripting concept every week.  Students had to complete their projects using the programming concepts selected by their teacher. As we focus on improving basic reading and writing literacy, our ESL students have to write, type, record sounds, illustrate and add actions for one story every day. It works well as a daily writing cycle.
9.    A number of students needed additional time and tactile strategies to grasp the idea of appearing as moving by rapid change of costumes. We have developed flash cards of a cat with differently positioned legs which we had moving rapidly to demonstrate the idea. Surprisingly, it was the less literate students who were quicker to grasp many concepts as if to confirm the idea that the creative and routinised learning is controlled by different parts of the brain.  Students liked to discover the functionality of the scripting blocks by experimenting rather than reading the directions. Some of the students have spent a lot of time adjusting the number of steps to imitate a zebra galloping.