I teach grade 6, music, and technology at ASIA-Sumas Mountain. I have started TLITE this year. I am hoping to get some experience in action research before I have to delve into a second year AR project for TLITE.
Last year, Gary Toews emailed me a program called 'Scratch.' It is a program developed by students at MIT that allows students as young as 8 to create animations, interactive programs, and games. These projects can then be uploaded onto the Scratch website for the world to see. Students can download each other's projects and take them apart to see how they work. It is a very easy to learn, easy to use, powerful medium...and it's free. Click to go to the website.
Scratch forces you to problem solve through the nature of the program. You write a script, start the program, and see what it does. Inevitably, something will go wrong. Then you go back and view the problem, decide on a solution, implement a change, and view the result. Because the Scratch program forces the user into the problem solving cycle when creating projects, I would like to see if it will improve student's problem solving skills in other subject areas.
Good luck everyone.
-Clayton
If you would like to see a few of the projects that I worked on this summer click the links below.
http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/CousinAvi/33114
http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/CousinAvi/31360
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Using 'Scratch' to Improve Problem Solving
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5 comments:
That sounds very cool! Does it work on Mac and PC or is it totally web based?
It is a free program available from www.scratch.mit.edu There are identical PC and MAC versions. If you want to upload, you have to sign up at the scratch website.
This is so cool! I think my project may have to change after seeing some of Scratch. Thanks for posting the link.
This is a great tool. I can see kids enjoying the creative aspect of "play" and "dealing" with the frustrations of programming ...
I wonder how to demonstrate a link between working out problems in this situation with problem solving in other situations - ie. interpersonal; math word problems; logic problems, etc. Let me know what you have in mind to show some relationship. It would be great if something could be connected in this regard ....
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