A few details from my current Scratch project at school.

- Very “social” students are choosing to work on it during the breaks instead of going outside – almost like its a hobby because there is no official deadline.
- Many members of my computer club and working on their projects at home on a daily basis. They are always saving their latest work to a flash drive to transport back and forth.
- They are so excited that most of my mornings are spent previewing what the student did the night before.
- Students who didn’t understand the Cartesian Plan get it now.
- Students who didn’t understand 360 degrees in a rotation get it now.
- Maybe its a retro trend but most students are re creating Atari games – PONG!
- Students now understand that procedural writing could have conditions (IF bread is thawed -> make a sandwich. Else -> thaw bread). Board games (IF roll a 6 -> some event)
- Many of my hands on learners are flying.
- Many of my less confident students are now the “goto” people for debugging issues.
- My students understand the difference between a syntax error and a logical error.
- Everyone one of them has downloaded SCRATCH at home and some even share their projects with the online Scracth community. Huge collaborative piece. They download and learn someone elses program and in term share their own back. Future students may do collaborative SCRATCH projects with neighbouring schools. Something for me to ponder.
- Kids are programming cheat codes to manipulate variables in their games. Certain key combinations are triggering specific events that only the author knows…

Many of you have asked about Scratch. Download it and poke around. Younger grades can bounce balls and create “Screen Savers” before moving on to video games. Remember it is a process. Junior grades have expressed frustrations because they were exposed to heavy video games initially. Baby steps on this one. Start with a simple animation and move on to keyboard control of objects. Don’t “wow” your students with a Mario game that you have downloaded. Many of those projects are created by adults and senior programmers. The kids will eventually see these games as they continue the learning process and begin to explore the online Scatch community.

Scratch.mit.edu

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