Scratch Getting unstuck day 1

So I came across getting unstuck a 21 day challenge  for the programming environment scratch.
Having attended the CS firehose at ISTE in Chicago I reconnected with the scratch team by following them on twitter. @ScratchEdTeam . I found out about getting unstuck through that and have started.

So here is my first project



New learning

• Use glide to make movement look natural
• The motion blocks will take on the position of the sprite

Digital tote resources

https://www.ncwit.org/project/counselors-computing-c4c

https://www.weteachcs.org/

https://www.birdbraintechnologies.com/

https://scratch.mit.edu/

https://unity3d.com/

http://bootstrapworld.org

https://www.iste.org/resources/product?id=3981

https://edu.google.com/computer-science/?modal_active=none

http://connect.iste.org/communities/community-home?CommunityKey=6fed01aa-9e1f-4c27-87d1-95d0afcbbbeb&_ga=2.10660724.1543399721.1527795788-599841043.1457746050
Add to digital tote | Go to my digital tote

https://code.org/

https://www.media.mit.edu/people/mres/overview/

https://makecode.com/

https://unity3d.com/education

https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/lifelong-kindergarten
Description: Lifelong Kindergarten by Mitch Resnick

https://www.ncwit.org/
Description: National Council for Women and Information Technology

https://www.iste.org/resources/product?id=4096&format=Book&name=Creative+Coding

Description: Josh Caldwell: Creative Coding

https://nofearcoding.org
Description: No Fear Coding

https://utexas.app.box.com/s/c6pfmvj0dkxc3o7swyplrk95pyu3wnax
Description: WeTeach_CS ISTE 2018 Conference Presentation

ISTECS2018FirehoseAnnouncement.pdf
Description: CS 2018 Firehose Announcement

ISTECSFirehose2018Program.pdf
Description: ISTE CS Firehose 2018 Program

ISTE_CSFirst_EducatorsPDslidedeck_final.pdf
Description: Google: Using CS First to Teach Foundational Computer Science (Grades 4-9)

Ulearn Roundup

The best thing about Ulearn for me this year was that feeling of a community working together.
Educators are a friendly bunch and there were great moments when the people around breakout tables 
added to and complimented what the Presenters had to say and do. 

Facilitators

Facilitators like Mark Osborne (http://theopensourceschool.blogspot.co.nz/ http://osborne.kiwi.nz/) and Amanda Signal (http://heymilly.blogspot.co.nz/) had alot of involvement from the teachers attending their workshops. 

In Mark's workshop he used  a collection of what research says improves learning. I like the simplicity of this idea with the effect size stripped away but how to be effective left. 

My "to do" from Mark's workshop is to make these visible somewhere in my learning environment and to try to make this a "theory in action" rather than an "espoused theory."


 


Amanda was working with a large group of teachers using the animation programme scratch. When I came into the room every one was hard at learning and when I consider the collection of  the effective above Amanda's workshop was a great example of many of these theories in action. 

• Working at their own pace
• Creating and using worked examples
• Learning co-operatively
• Teaching each other skills
• Guided and independent practice etc

Amanda had a great site she used with some starter tasks (or fun in other words.) https://sites.google.com/site/ulearnscratch/

I have had and seen alot of super learning using Scratch and Amanda's wasn't the only session looking at scratch unfortunately I missed Bob Bottomley's one but am pleased to see people getting in behind the kind of learning Scratch promotes, at Ulearn.

My "to do" from Amanda's workshop is to work with scratchers again at my school this term and to connect with the other educators scratching at learning.

Bob Botto

Scratching the Surface

I have always liked the idea of using scratch with students

• to help them think
• make them doers 
• instant feedback.

I have been looking at an inquiry to find out

Is the use of scratch a way to increase student understanding of geometry?

Here was the First Project Challenge I gave students. 1. Create a Scratch script which tells a sprite to draw each of the following shapes in succession. triangle square pentagon hexagon octagon So how did things turn out Well with just a few basic introductions like pen down Movement and turning they got cracking The group almost all were able to complete the challenge though it was interesting to see  how they achieved it. Quite a few of them had really repetitive code to achieve it which  presented a great opportunity to look for patterns and optimise it. Here is a solution that  works and underneath it working.

Learn more about this project

The inquiry is showing some promise for scratch. In my next post I want to discuss with students some of their thinking around Maths.