Are you looking for an easy, creative way to engage your students? Scratch programming might be the answer. Earlier this year I attended the Computer Coding with Scratch workshop and was introduced to this interesting program. Scratch is a graphical programming language which allows you to create programs as easily as building with blocks. Each component of the program has a different graphical shape so it is easy to fit together the pieces you want to make your own project. With Scratch you can create programs that include graphics, animations, music, and sound. The program’s ease of use makes trying new iterations easy.
At the workshop we learned about the program and tried our hand at making our own animation. The program is simple and intuitive enough to use that even those of us who are “digital immigrants” can navigate this program successfully. I can see this being used with my 3rd, 4th and 5th grade library students to help develop their sense of timing, sequencing, and flow in developing their communication and storytelling skills. Working with Scratch can also prepare students to transition more readily to traditional text-based programming languages. Scratch projects can be shared on the Scratch website or embedded in any other webpage. You can see many sample projects and try out Scratch yourself by going to http://scratch.mit.edu.