Monday, 1 October 2012

Who wants to have a go at Scratch?

Scratch is a free visual programming language suitable for primary children developed by MIT. It has hundreds of thousands of registered users. I've played about with it and have been following comments and developments through the Computing at School website.

http://community.computingatschool.org.uk/



I'd like to explore using this software in school but not being in a school, I'm looking for teachers who are similarly interested. If you've never heard of Scratch (other programmes also exist) then here are a few web-links by way of introduction.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scratch_(programming_language)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hFNBZUEyXs&feature=relmfu

There are a significant number of resources available to support introducing Scratch either within the curriculum or as an extracurricular club (Creative Computing Club). 
Scratch can be used by pupils to enter Animation 13 run by Manchester University. This might be a good starting project.

http://animation13.cs.manchester.ac.uk/



Scratch can also be used with Lego WeDo which I'm afraid I know little about but which is an added point of interest.
In case someone is interested, part of the discussions on the CaS website centres round getting girls interested in computing (and science). One correspondent pointed readers to GoldieBlox as an interesting development to watch.


http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/16029337/goldieblox-the-engineering-toy-for-girls



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