Community reviews for Scratch

I have been using Tikatok for more than four years. At the beginning of the Social Studies Class, every year, I introduce the tool to my students and I clearly explain to them my expectations. During each lesson of the chapter I can see the enthusiasm, their motivation to create an exciting ebook. In this activity, students work cooperatively, build trust and promote open communication, create and innovate, think critically, learn collaboratively, help each other. They present either in group or individually their project to the class . I sincerely think that Tikatok is an useful and insightful tool to prepare our student for their generation.

I think Scratch is an outstanding tool. My students are actively engaged every time we go on Scratch. They are going home and creating their own complex games on Scratch using what they have learned in class, but also through their on research on Scratch. Scratch is great for all levels of learners. There are tons of help videos online about Scratch. Also, one of the great features of Scratch is the ability to Remix. Students who need more support could remix an already made Scratch to help them learn about programming. I highly recommend Scratch to all classroom teachers as a way for student to be engaged and produce a product.

Overall, I really like using SCRATCH in my classroom. All of my students have experienced some level of success and accomplishment, regardless of their academic history, when using SCRATCH. I have had students who struggle with reading or writing excel in their work with SCRATCH. There are many ways to arrive at similar results with SCRATCH, essentially there is no 'right' answer. This has created a community in my classroom where students are always sharing new techniques with their peers. Many of my students went home and created many games and videos after we completed the SCRATCH lessons because they were so excited by creating their own unique products. Students can also share their work with other SCRATCH users, allowing them to participate in a global community. I do have parents sign their children up, so they can monitor sharing on the site. While many of my students found this program to be fun, there was some frustration along the way. Once students begin building their code with the blocks, it can become daunting for students and they have trouble going back into their code to fix errors. Another issue was students forgot their passwords to this site many times, so I suggest keeping their passwords on index cards and keep them handy in the classroom. Students should also be reminded to save their work periodically so they do not lose their work.

Scratch Jr. is a wonderful tool to explore programming. The students learn to code by moving the characters through the chosen background, the setting of the story. The interaction of the characters with the setting creates the story. This program can be used in a variety of classroom activities, individual students could create a story, partners working together could collaborate and even small groups could work together showing patience and excitement as their stories unfold. This is a great tool to introduce basic programming, engaging and fun.

So fun and easy to use and what great satisfaction when you create something!

Scratch enables the user to bring coding to the forefront across disciplines in an engaging, rigorous, and creative way. Scratch is a great way to tell a story for children in grades K-5. K-2 should tackle Scratch Jr. and 3-5 Scratch. It is a simple resource that enables the user to create their own animations and games. If the user is a creative teacher, they can use it very effectively to enhance comprehension, vocabulary and expression. There is nothing more important than empowering the next generation to design, create, and express themselves with new media technologies. That's the idea behind Scratch. Kids around the world are using Scratch to program their own interactive stories, games, animations, and simulations with Scratch - and sharing their creations with one another online. In the process, kids learn to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively.'

I love that Scratch has visual guides and tutorials to get ANYONE started, even if they have no previous experience. Color coded blocks by type is helpful, too. This guidance means it's quick for students to produce something animated and experience excitement that they were successful. It helps a teacher differentiate because it's easy enough for beginners, but there's enough options for more complexity (i.e. Making whole games) to keep more experienced students engaged for awhile.

I like the ease at which students take to this program. My 9th grade class had little or no issues in following the on screen instructions in built into the scratch program to create animations of their names and their own games. Scratched.com was a great resources for finding lesson plans and ideas from other educators and many I integrated into my own lessons. The scratch program itself, in my opinion, is more suited to the elementary and middle school age group, but certainly has applications for teaching algorithms etc in the HS age group.

Overall I don't like the barrier to entry, it is difficult to first get started and tutorials aren't the best or most interactive. I found the copying of other projects is the best way to get started up, but I feel like they could have a more user friendly tutorial to help you get started. The website having an integrated interactive tutorial would be huge! Once you get over that hump, the design of the website and creativity kids can have are incredible and it really is a fun introduction to coding.

Coding isn't just for fun, or for an hour once a year (though the Hour of Code is a GREAT place to start). It truly reaches higher level thinking skills that transfer across content. As it is highly engaging and open enough to support students along a continuum of understanding, it can be great for personalization and differentiation. My only suggestion might be to have more "on demand" videos (examples or tutorials) that students could click when they get stuck instead of full tutorials and a menu of help videos that students have to search for. Students have to demonstrate flexibility and resiliency as they use Scratch, and these skills ultimately make them better learners no matter what they are learning. They become better risk takers and problem solvers, which has translated into growth and higher achievement.