home

= =

Scratch in the classroom toc Scratch from MIT is more than a programming language. It is a means of developing skills for the 21st century for students from K to 12. Even younger and older students will have fun playing, er, learning with Scratch.

I first heard of Scratch in March 2007 when an IT colleague mentioned that it is a programming language that is graphically oriented and meant to encourage more girls to become programmers.

I had a brief look at the home page and student projects and decided that it would not appeal to high school programmers. Furthermore, I didn't have time to learn yet another language in September along with four new teaching areas.

Was I ever wrong. I looked again, but this time in more depth, when another colleague decided to use it for his class.

Step-by-step
I have been using Scratch, a drag and drop programming language developed by researchers at MIT, since November 2007. I am quite excited about its potential for teaching other skills besides programming.

I have set up this wiki to build-up a course for beginner programmers.

Jun 2011
Used Scratch with ESL students in Info Tech. It was good for learning English in small doses. For programming I used Kodu for the visual learners, PHP for those considering programming as a career, Scratch as a break from PHP and Kodu.

Jun 2010
Used Scratch & Blender for the Info Tech portion of a 4-way rotation for all grade 8s in applied skills. I focussed more on Blender this year.

Jun 2009
Used Scratch for the programming portion of Info Tech 9/11 students. The Grade 9s were more enthusiastic and had fun with it.

Jun 2008
used Scratch successfully with Grades 9 to 12 students even though some of my senior students felt it was not real programming