Scratch

Scratch is an incredible online tool created by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that allows users to practice early coding skills.  The program is easy to get the hang of through its use of click and drag commands which makes it ideal to use with children ages 8-16 years old.  Students can use these commands to create stories, games, and animations that they come up with themselves.

You first have to type Scratch into your web browser to get to it and then you can start creating.  You can then create a free account by hitting Join Scratch in the top right-hand corner of the screen.  By creating an account it will allow you to save your creations as well as interact with members of the Scratch community by looking at other people's creations from around the world.  After you create an account you can click on Start Creating to make your own Scratch masterpiece.

There are 3 tabs to click on which are Code, Costumes, and Sounds.  The Codes tab is where you will spend most of your time creating your very own Scratch.  Once you click on the Coding tab you want to go to the yellow events option and drag one of those commands onto the white creation space.  These are codes that allow you to get your Scratch to start performing functions.  Once you have a code from the events tab which may include a code like "when green flag pressed" you can add other codes to get your sprite character to start performing actions.  An easy code is to add a blue motion code like the "move 10 steps" code so you can start to see how your sprite character can perform codes you give him.  You should experiment with different codes by inserting them into your Scratch creation to see what functions they have in the program.  The costume tab allows you to customize what your sprite character looks like while the Sounds tab allows you to add and create your own sounds to put in your Scratch creation.  Scratch is a lot about creativity and experimenting with the different codes to see what you can create.  Below is a video to get you off to the right start when it comes to learning the basics of Scratch. 

Scratch is an amazing tool to use as a teacher in order to educate students on the 21st-century skills that they will need in order to be successful in the technology immersive world they live in.  You can have students create a game, animation or story which allows them to use their creativity while at the same time being exposed to mathematical concepts like variables and coordinates.  Students can work on their collaboration skills through Scratch by working with their peers on their very own creation.  They will need to be able to express their ideas to one another and work together in order to achieve a common goal.  

Using Scratch is also fun and engaging for students and allows students to make connections to what they are learning.  They get to see what happens right in front of them if they decide to change a variable or numbers in their program which is something that isn't applicable in an everyday math class where students are just writing equations on paper.  Ultimately, students learn the important skill of perseverance and never giving up.  Students will need to problem solve and work through many issues in their coding adventures in order to achieve the results they want.  This requires critical thinking in order to fully understand the inner workings of what is wrong in their program so that adjustments can be made.  Scratch can be an incredible tool to stray away from our memorization focused academia so that students can become creative problem solvers.

References

Scratch. (n.d.). For Parents. Retrieved from https://scratch.mit.edu/parents 

Scratch Logo [Online Image] Retrieved from https://scratch.mit.edu/

Scratch Video [Online Video] Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1E8opsBP_98