Scratching Around

P6 students have begun to use Scratch in their ICT lessons. This brilliant piece of software from MIT is a great learning tool, allowing access to theories of programming as well as creativity.

We have been looking at different ways of learning the software, either progressing through a series of tutorials provided by Learnscratch.org or simply playing with the software and trying things out. Interestingly the results varied between classes with those set the task of investigating through play appearing to have a better understanding of the software than those who were working through the tutorials.

Learn more about this project

However, the tutorials do contain some excellent ideas for extended projects which we will be visiting in the next few weeks.

Scratch is an extremely engaging piece of software, students quickly become immersed in the intricacies and require little in the way of support from the teacher and are at ease with methods of self-support or helping each other out;

"How do you get rid of what you've drawn?"

"Right there."

Another great aspect of Scratch is that it's completely free and downloadable from the MIT website. It's a must have download for all students at the top of KS2 and up (or maybe even younger)

You can download Scratch here.

For those digital immigrants who like me require the security blanket of organised tutorials, LearnScratch is a great place to start.