Scratch@MIT Conference

We just returned from presenting at the Scratch@MIT conference at MIT in Boson. If you are not familiar with Scratch, it is a new programming tool developed at MIT. Students imagine, create, and share games, animations and more. This past year we used the software in my fifth grade elementary technology classes. Also, students formed a club to continue to learn more ways to program using Scratch. I did not realize how important Scratch has become and what a huge impact Scratch has had world wide until this conference.

Participants all over the world ( US, UK, Australia, Russia, Korea, Taiwan, Poland.....) shared ways we incorporate Scratch in schools and groups in elementary through high school levels. Great things happened each hour including new ideas, resources, research partnerships, and collaborative plans for the new school year.

Four students from various countries were featured during Mitchel Resnick’s Opening Keynote (see video). My students will be surprised when I come back with videos and photos of famous Scratchers. More than once these students heard that they were like rock stars of the Scratch community.

The organization of the conference had other choices that were new for me. One way that worked very well was to have three presenters in a room. In one hour, each presenter gave a 10 minute talk. The rest of the hour was a Q&A session with the audience.

My first session choice began with Tracy Ho sharing her case study of student performance using Scratch. I was most interested in her findings of the patterns of events in which students learn, transfer, and apply Scratch. Tracy is a professor in the music department at Taipei Municipal University of Education, Taiwan. Jeanene Bluhm de Carvajal, founder of the Thomas Jefferson Institute, shared how they implement Scratch to help develop student creativity in their schools in Mexico. Krystof Haber, who has spent eleven years teaching Indigenous students with the last eight years at Antarringinya Centre in Australia, shared his unique teaching experiences with the audience. We were incredulous to learn how he uses Scratch to keep students engaged in having fun learning. His Australia Aboriginal students come and go, so Scratch offers the tools of engagement that he needs and that they love.

Friday at 9:30 am, we (JoNelle Gardner and Audrey Cageao) presented with a professor originally from Spain and another presenter from Russia. With three presentations for the hour, the audience got to hear and talk to:
• Teachers who use Scratch in their technology classes. Audrey shared how she introduces, guides, and supports students in their Scratch experiences. I (JoNelle) added how I integrate Scratch with science, math, language arts and technology via student wiki websites http://isurffer-friends.wikispaces.com/Scratch
• Creator (Juan Carlos Olabe) of a supportive website that has and extensive lists of Scratch video tutorials http://learnscratch.org/
• Head of a laboratory and coordinator of www.letopisi.ru (Yevgeny Patarakin) and learn how young programmers in Russia are using Scratch

Other conference sessions were also incredible. It was great listening to educators of all levels and regions of the world who are ready to lend a hand and work together.

I met educators and high school students from Arizona who are involved with Kimberly Scott’s wonderful program called COMPUGIRLS. http://compugirls.asu.edu/home.php These girls use Scratch with themes of social justice – very inspiring. We exchanged contact information to video conference with my computer club this year.

During Karen Bennen’s (from MIT Scratch Team) Scratch-Ed session, she brilliantly led the group in sharing, learning and supporting professional development for an upcoming new website for the community of Scratch educators.

I’ll describe more sessions in the next blog entry. Until then you can see more about the conference at http://scratch.mit.edu/conference/index.html
Conference Program: http://scratch.mit.edu/conference/Scratch_Final_Program.pdf

A HUGE THANK YOU to the Scratch@MIT TEAM!! Mitch and his team are marvelous. They all are an enthusiastic bunch and show a genuine joy for what they are doing and sharing with us.
And ooooh my… to the fabulous caterers too - you are the best!!

Field Trip, Videos, and Wikis

Last month Gold Hill 4th graders spent two nights at Barrier Island, an environmental camp on Seabrook Island, SC. Included in the three days of classes were lessons and activities about early Native Americans. Students learned about the history and culture of Cusabo tribes along the rivers and the coast of SC. In other classes, students learned about regional plants and animals, their adaptations and how Native American tribes respectfully lived among and used their natural resources.

We incorporated lessons learned into our On theTrail of the First People Project led by Karen Kleigman in NY at MidLink Magazine. Karen's organization of the project offered many new technology choices. The detailed instructions made this highly collaborative project easy to follow.

We set up a videoconference with Adam Dugger's class in NY- Hi y'all! During the Q& A it was evident that ALL students were amazed at the weather difference (unusually warm December in SC), the wide sandy shores, the frequency of bottle-nosed dolphin sitings, the palmetto trees in the maritime forest, the huge horseshoe crabs, and sleeping in cabins on the beach!

Back at school, our students created videos with Photostory3, a free download from Microsoft. Per Karen's instructions, I uploaded an example of student work on Google Video (Beta). I had a gmail account so this part went quickly.


Also with Photostory3/Google video I added a video documenting how we started using wikispaces.

See these videos and the project wiki for more information of starting wikis and other projects at your school. Better yet...go see see Karen Kleigman's presentation at FETC 2008

We Have Made it to Wikispaces!

Students in fourth and fifth grade Technology classes now have their own secure wiki webpage. Wikispaces is a special website where students have a secure place to learn and share. Members only in this cyberspace - only our teachers, students and their parents may enter. Teachers monitor the site daily. We are incorporating safety and etiquette rules that we have learned to create the first pages. Soon each student will have a mystery partner in our school to build our first Technology/Social Studies project on Native Americans. We are working together to prepare for a project with 4th grade students in other states. This collaborative project will also help our students build character education and communication skills in Language Arts in our new world of ever changing technology.

What is a wiki? Watch this brief video on Wikis in Plain English

What is a WIki? Watch this and find out!

Welcome to GHES Blogger

We have exciting goals in Technology for 2007-08!
Blogging, podcasting, and wikis are new additions to Technology this year. Not sure what these mean? We will explain these here in our blogs and in our podcasts. For now just double-click on a word to find an answer!

Stay tuned and learn along with GHES. Communicating and learning with our terrific GHES families are important to us. The next few entries will explain how this will work for students, parents, and teachers this year.

While you are wondering...help us name our Blog and our Podcast. So far we have

GHES iSURFFers

for

GHES StUdents Ready For the Future

We also need a logo and a mascot!

Sounds like we need some input from YOU!