Technology Integration

Yesterday I finally got to play with some computer programming with a younger set.  A few weeks ago, I heard about Scratch, an object based software programming tool.  What fun we had!  I spent no more than five minutes of their hour with me giving them the intro. They’re all on laptops, so I just had them close the lids after they logged in and took them through some of the program’s features. 

In about fifteen minutes, these students were making things move, speak, twirl on their screens. At that time, I said, ” I don’t know how to make two sprites move at the same time, such as having the buffalo chase the dog across the screen.” They really didn’t believe me when I said I didn’t know. So I put that challenge to the group, and within about 10 minutes, two had solutions.

I put their laptops on the projector, and we shared the information. They were equally surprised when I told them, “I’ll bet that there are different ways of doing this same thing, but I don’t know what they might be.” And in about another five minutes, we had a different way of making things move.

I don’t plan a longer lesson with Scratch at this point in the year. With our structure, this program might lend itself well for an “exploratory” in grades 7+8. There are a lot of games that could be group designed and created by teams. But for now, a brief introduction to that tool was a great success.

Oh, by the way , this was a group of 10 third and fourth graders in a small rural school at the gateway to the Northwoods of Maine.