Scratch Seminar

Monday evening saw a number of interested teachers gather at Kellett to share experience and expertise of the programming software, Scratch. Teachers were enthusiastic in sharing what they had done and future collaboration was discussed.

We were lucky enough to have Jane Harris from CIS attend the meeting and it was fascinating to hear her views. Jane has worked extensively in Scratch and presented at MIT's Scratch Conference last summer. She has been working in Maths lessons with groups using the software to investigate aspects of Shape & Space, e.g. tesselation, rotation and transformation. Student understanding of these ideas appear to have improved significantly as a result of her work. This is a clear example of how the 'traditional' curriculum can be taught using aspects of technology and I look forward to trying out some of her ideas here at Kellett.

I have been mightily impressed with the work our Year 6 and 7 students have created this term in Scratch and I'm hoping to extend this further down the school. For students who want to use the computer during the holidays, Scratch is an ideal medium for experimenting and creating. Amzingly, it's completely free and can be downloaded from here.

Those wishing to investigate Scratch further might like to look at the Delicious page we've set up for Scratch. You could always let us know of alternative Scratch resources by adding them in the comments below.