Category: Kids and Learning

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Teaching Kids To Think Using Scratch

I’ve been teaching Scratch to my students lately, and it’s made me remember just how much I enjoy dabbling with programming.  I’m really not much of a code monkey, but I do enjoy writing programs, telling the computer what I want it to do, and then having that feeling of mastery when it actually does what I tell it to do!

I heard a lot about Scratch before I actually started using it myself… people kept telling me how good it was, but for some reason I never really got around to trying it myself.  When I finally did take a look at it, I couldn’t believe I waited so long to check it out!  It’s a GREAT piece of software that all kids should spend some time learning how to use.  I’d encourage you to NOT make the same mistake I did, and wait so long before looking at it.

I taught myself to write computer programs back in the 80s on a second hand Commodore Pet computer.  It used a form of BASIC, the same language used on the original Apple II computers, and I thought learning to program was the coolest thing ever. Being able to write instructions into a computer and get it to do stuff was a real buzz for me… a geeky buzz to be sure, but a buzz nonetheless.  🙂

Over the past 20 years I’ve taught quite a lot of programming to children and without fail it’s something they get a real kick out of.  They really seem to engage with the big ideas of programming – problem solving, thinking mathematically and using logic and reasoning. It’s the practical application of those ideas and the creative thinking required to solve authentic problems that forms the basis of a truly engaging learning experience.  While I don’t believe that everyone necessarily needs to become a computer programmer, I do think that everyone would benefit from learning the basic skills and mental gymnastics required to write simple computer programs.  I’ve found it to be an incredibly useful skill, and the underlying understanding it gives into computers and how they do what they do has come in really handy over the years.

Scratch takes all of the essential programming constructs like sequencing, conditional branching, control structures, data manipulations, etc, and wraps them in a very friendly, very easy to use environment that even the youngest students can use with just a little knowledge.  It’s quite intuitive to learn and you can do simple things fairly easily, yet there is really no limit as to how far you take it.  Don’t be like me and hear about it but do nothing… download a copy now, give it to your kids and watch the magic happen.

For this year’s K12 Online Conference I did a presentation about Scratch, called Teaching Kids To Think Using Scratch.  It’s trying to squeeze a lot of stuff into a small space, since the presentations are capped at 20 minutes, but I think it’s a reasonable introduction to some of the key ideas behind Scratch.

As you can see in the unscripted footage of the kids towards the end of the video, they talk about solving their own problems and figuring out how to work things out for themselves… to me this is what real learning should be all about.  Watch the clip of the two girls working out what the variables should be in order to make the sprite move exactly the way they want, the engagement on their faces, and the expression of triumph when it finally works the way they want… as Lexie says, “Scratch brings out your inner awesomeness!”  I think she’s right.

There was so much more I wanted to include in this video, but I simply couldn’t squeeze it all in.  Instead, I’m going to add some further resources at www.chrisbetcher.com/scratch, so drop by and take a peek at what’s there (It’s a bit of a work in progress, but it’s an open wiki so feel free to add anything you think might be useful!)

K12 Online 2010

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Lifelong Learners?

I got interested in computers and their potential uses in teaching and learning way back in 1982 when I was at Art School/Teachers’ College. I met a guy named Colin who worked in the media center at the art school who had taught himself how to program in AppleBasic on the original Apple IIe machines. He was doing all sort of really interesting stuff with these machines, writing his own programs for randomised poetry, creating graphics, creating maths problems, etc. Colin and I became good friends and I asked him to teach me how to program too. It was INSTANTLY obvious to me that computers and technology generally could be used to support, assist, extend and just generally make learning a whole lot more interesting, and even as a preservice teacher in the early 80s I was always trying to come up with interesting ways that computers could be used to make school more interesting.

Like most colleges at the time, the college I attended didn’t offer any computer-based courses. I went and had a chat to the Dean and asked why. I still remember the conversation… he didn’t know why, he just assumed that a computer was used for administrative stuff, keeping lists of students and managing who paid fees, etc, but hadn’t really thought about their use in education. After some fast talking, I managed to convince him to let me vary my course units for the next semester to do an off-site computer programming course and have it count towards my regular course credits. And so once a week for the semester I traveled across town to a different college to do a three hour programming course.

The following year, I managed to convince the Dean that such a course should be a standard offering for everyone planning to be a teacher. To cut a long story short, the college did start to offer a course called “The Computer and the Art Educator” held offsite at another nearby university, and counting towards our regular course credits. This course used primitive graphics tablets, graphic software and programming skills to explore how computers could extend themselves into classroom use. It was 1983. I was rather pleased that I was able to play a part in helping other people see what appeared so obvious to me.

Funnily enough, there were many of my college friends who could not see the point of computers at all, and would argue with me that they had nothing to do with what happens in a classroom. They just weren’t interested in learning about something that didn’t interest them.

Since that time, I’ve worked with a lot of teachers to help them see how much better learning can be with the wise use of technology. I’ve tried every approach I can think of, and at the end of the day, I still don’t know why some people just “get it” and some just don’t. To me, it’s so darn obvious! Having taught in a technology rich environment for over 20 years now, I have seen over and over how the use of technology can motivate, engage and inspire students to learn better and to be better. I’ve seen kids just “switch on” when they learn with computers. More than that, I’ve seen how the use of technology for learning can actually change a teacher’s practice and pedagogy for the better. I’ve seen the effects of increased student motivation and engagement, and I’ve experienced the evolution of my own teaching to take a more student focused, more choice-driven, more differentiated approach to my teaching.

Ok, so having said all that, it drives me crazy when I see other teachers who simply don’t “get it”. I’ve experienced the frustration of working with supposedly-intelligent adults who appear to be unable to move beyond the ability to cut-and-paste. I even had one colleague at a previous school admit that she had been avoiding technology for years, and I found out that she did not even know how to use basic mouse functions. How do you even function in a school these days without these skills! The frustrating thing about these situations, for me, is that part of my role in this particular school was doing technology support for the staff and despite every effort to provide support for these sorts of people, they always managed to avoid any help that was offered to them. No matter what model of technology support we tried they managed to avoid taking advantage of it.

They remind me of the people in this video clip… as soon as the external forces stop, they stop too and then seem incapable of moving forward for themselves.

So that’s at one end of the spectrum. At the other is people like you and I who probably just need a bit of guidance to get started and then we assume some responsibility for our own learning. We accept that if we want to learn something new, then taking on the task of learning it is actually up to us, not someone else.  Any assistance we get from others is seen as a bonus, not a requirement.

I will go so far as to say that those teachers who actively avoid learning about (and teaching with) technology are abdicating their basic responsibility as teachers because they are failing to model and live out the basic quality that every teacher should have – curiosity and a sense of lifelong learning.

Every school’s prospectus I’ve ever seen talks about how they aim to produce students who are “independent, lifelong learners”, but so many teachers continue to display an embarrassingly low level of responsibility for their own ongoing learning, and are therefore poor models of what they expect from their students. I find it frustrating that so many teachers willingly accept that there are certain unavoidable parts of their job, and yet they steadfastly resist adopting the use of digital technologies and act as though they are free to pick and choose what parts of their job they are willing to enact. Why is the embracing of technology for learning still seen as so optional by so many?

The answer is probably that they don’t yet see the benefits. They haven’t seen the kids’ eyes light up when they do something truly interesting with computers or technology. They still see it as another optional add-on to their already busy day. They see technology as something that has to be “bolted on” to what they are already doing, instead of something that can help them do what they already do even better. They might have experienced failure in the past because of something that went wrong, something that didn’t work, and they don’t want to look foolish again. Perhaps they just think that if they can hold out for a few more years, this will all go away, or they might make it to retirement. (although I think age has very little to do with it)

Of course, this is not true of all teachers, and there are many, many excellent educators that embody and model all of the traits of lifelong learning that they expect from their students. A lot of teachers are very good at this, but there are still far too many that don’t.  And frankly, I think that’s unacceptable.

Image: ‘I am still learning‘
http://www.flickr.com/photos/47244805@N00/303567279

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Digigirlz

A few weeks ago, I got an email at work advertising a free technology event for teenage girls run called DigiGirlz.  It was being run by Microsoft Australia and it’s aim was to promote careers in the IT industry for girls.  It’s a good idea. Women are far too under-represented in IT in Australia (and probably other parts of the world too) so I’m all for supporting any initiative that can help attract smart, creative women into the world of technology.

The event sounded like it would actually be pretty interesting.  It was being held at Microsoft’s main Australian Offices at North Ryde and offered a chance to meet some of the inspirational women who work at Microsoft to find out what they do, and to have a chat with several Australian universities about the sorts of career paths that IT might offer. There was also a couple of hands-on workshops in Microsoft’s Photosynth and DeepZoom technologies, as well as a chance to to see the new Project Natal gaming platform. It all sounded pretty interesting to me!  However, we don’t offer any IT courses at PLC (that’s right, none!  Something I’d like to see change!) so I wasn’t quite sure who I’d ask to attend the event.

After a phone call to RSVP for the day we were offered 15 places at the event, so, using the Feedback Module in Moodle to collect details of interested students, I offered it to our Year 10 students on a first-in, best-dressed basis.  13 students responded positively and when the day arrived (March 24 – which was Ada Lovelace Day of course!) we all bundled into the PLC minibus and made our way up to North Ryde.

The folk at Microsoft went out of their way to try and give us a great experience and provide a range of things to see and do.  They gave each student a goodie-bag with information, fed them with snacks and drinks, and then put them into groups and rotated them through the 4 sessions.  We had a short address by a very dynamic female executive who works at Microsoft Australia and a few shorter addresses by several others.

The students then went off to their four workshop sessions, which they rotated through for the next couple of hours.  Overall, I thought it was a useful experience, although I had a few suggestions for how it might be improved for next time…

  • While it was a lovely gesture to feed the students before they started the sessions, getting teenage girls all revved up on soft drinks and chips just before you then ask them to sit still and listen for the next few hours was not a great idea.
  • The discussion sessions with both the women from Microsoft and also the university people were informative, but too long. Kids don’t want to just sit and listen like that, at least not for that long!
  • The hands on session in Photosynth and DeepZoom was pretty good, although there seemed to be a few technical hiccups in the session I saw.  I’m still not really sure what to make of these technologies, and beyond a mild cool-factor, I wonder just how useful they really are.
  • The biggest disappointment was the session about the Project Natal platform.  Natal is the next generation of the XBox 360, and takes gaming to a new level by enabling natural interaction without wires or controllers.  It’s been floating about on YouTube for a while now, but I was really keen to actually see it in action.  Alas, all we got to actually see of Project Natal was a PowerPoint with a few videos (the very same ones that are on YouTube)  Although we were told that Natal was getting close to release for this year, there was no working demo to play with.  Despite the fact that we were being told about Natal by former FragDoll, Ashley Jenkins (who totally knows her stuff when it comes to games!) we didn’t see any live game demos at all.  I thought this was a big mistake by Microsoft, and I thought it odd that a product apparently so close to release would not be given a demo.  It would have been good (even expected!) to see Project Natal in action, but even without the live Natal demo I thought we would have at least had some real live gaming action with Ashley, perhaps showing us what a really serious gamer is capable of on the regular X-Box platform.  Instead, we saw a PowerPoint with a few product roadmap slides and a brief exposé of Ashley’s gamer heros. To be honest, I was looking forward to this session the most, but I thought what we were shown was a bit lame under the circumstances.
  • It might be good in future events to include some sort of hands-on programming experience – kept fairly simple of course – as there would be many students who have never had a go at programming a computer before.

Overall though, despite these little criticisms it was a worthwhile experience and the feedback from students that I saw was politely positive (although I felt it could have been much more hands-on, practical and faster-paced to hold the full engagement of the students).  PowerPoints and roundtable talkfests might be fine in the corporate boardroom but this style of presentation misses the mark somewhat with most teenage girls. I know that quite a few people mentioned this in their evaluation forms, so I’m sure that next year will be even better. 

Thanks to Microsoft and especially Catherine Eibner for running the event.  (And thanks also for the XBox 360 raffle prizes, one of which was won by one of our students.  You were very popular for that one Catherine!)