Learning some programming (Scratch)

To make room in the schedule for an extra hour of CS Unplugged, I cut the two Scratch lessons from last summer down from 90 minutes to 60 minutes.  I based the first Scratch lesson on the video course Scratch 1 provided by the curators of http://learnscratch.org.  TechKobwa students are more adept at reading written English than understanding spoken English.  I therefore started with a written transcript of the videos that we had created for last summer.  It had already been modified to use Scratch 2.0.  For this year, I also modified the order in which topics were introduced to give a quicker overview and encourage more experimentation, and added a lesson on changing the back drop. 

A teacher started by leading the students through the first couple of lessons, and then let them proceed at their own pace to read instructions and try things out.  Family leaders circulated through the room to answer questions.

The second Scratch lesson was delivered entirely by teachers with the help of family leaders, as I was teaching the fourth CS Unplugged lesson with half of the students at the same time.  They followed instructions for programming a simple show with two acts.  The teachers tell me that the students had a lot of fun with this lesson.   

The instructions for the lesson started out very detailed, as illustrated by the first few pages of the handout shown below:

Instructions gradually became less detailed.  The lesson left lots of room for extensions--addition of entirely new acts and embellishments of the two existing acts.  

For some reason, we don’t have any pictures of the Scratch lessons with students—maybe because all hands were to busy helping students and having fun with Scratch themselves.  This photo is of me introducing Scratch to the teachers during TOT. 

Unfortunately, several of the teachers are at schools that lack the infrastructure they would need (enough computers and reliable electricity) to teach Scratch at their home schools.  This was the rationale for spending more time on CS Unplugged lessons and less on Scratch, even though the teachers and students both had a lot of fun with Scratch. 

Of course, besides being fun, the Scratch lessons reinforced many of the algorithmic concepts they had learned about earlier in the week.  They could very concretely see that each sprite carried out a sequential algorithm; but that events allowed them to execute in parallel.  They also became very familiar with the concept of repetition.

Programming in Scratch

Teachers trying to help out students crowded around
too few working computers

We introduced the students to programming using Scratch in two 90-minute sessions.  With 42 machines in the computing lab and pairing students up, we thought we could teach these sessions to all students at once.  But we quickly revised that plan after the first Scratch session--too few of the machines could actually run Scratch 2.0 and the mice on a handful of the machines were essentially non-functional.  Also, the space was too cramped for teachers to reach all of the pairs that needed help or for individuals within the pairs to change roles.  Poor lighting in the Computer Lab made it difficult for students to read printouts with instructions.

Major squeezes in to offer some help

Given the logistical problems in that first session, Origene did a remarkable job demonstrating how they could program the Scratch cat to do a little dance (substituting "say" blocks for sound since the machines had no speakers) while changing its color, and add an animated sprite (Cassy) and a back drop. (To start the example of what students created below, press the green flag. While its running, press the space key to see the cat change its color.  It will terminate by itself after a while, or you can stop it by pressing the stop button)


   

For the second Scratch lesson, we revised the camp schedule to rotate students through three activities throughout the day. That gave us 20 students at a time. All could work on a machine running Scratch 2.0 and with a working mouse (important for using Scratch), and teachers could easily get to pairs to answer questions. There was ample space for students to switch roles.

Aimee did a fantastic job engaging the students in creating the beginning of a 2-act show. All got through the first act and many got through the second.  (The example below is of our complete Scratch program.  Press the green flag to start it executing and then follow the announcer's instructions.  Press the stop button to end the program.  No students got this far.  But their teachers went home with instructions for both completing and extending this project.)


Those that have access to computers at their schools are eager to finish up their projects and add new acts.

Teachers were all given USB drives containing the Scratch 2.0 installer, lesson plans, project descriptions, and links to other resources to continue teaching Scratch when they return to their schools.