In my previous post I spoke about the educational platform of Scratch – a basic programming language tool used to teach students to code.
I undertook significant research on this program and how it can be utilised within the classroom.
Here is a short excerpt from my research into the program.
Not only do teachers and researchers who have used Scratch report that students have ‘fun’ whilst using the program they also claim it has significantly enhanced ‘creativity’ and ‘problem solving skills’ within classrooms (Mladenovic, Rosic, & Mladenovic, 2016, p. 2).
Resnick (2012), one of the creators of Scratch, claims that among other things Scratch allows students to experiment with big ideas that may have otherwise been unattainable. He suggests that through Scratch, students are supported to ‘take complex ideas and break them down into simpler parts’ (Resnick, 2012, 13:55). Furthermore they are encouraged to persist and persevere through frustrations and difficulties they may encounter within the process. Most importantly though, the use of Scratch places learning into a meaningful context (Faloon, 2016). Resnick (2012) discusses this in his TED talk in the context of teaching a child about variables. Until this child was able to see how variables worked in the context of the game he had coded, it is unlikely he would have developed such a deep understanding of the concept.
Again, I would highly recommend listening to the TED talk by Mitch Resnick entitled ‘Let’s teach kids to code’.
Below you will find a screenshot of the lesson plan I designed using the Scratch tool- for a PDF version please contact me.
