Scratch

 =Summary of Scratch= toc

Scratch is a visual programming language and development interface created by MIT's Lifelong Kindergarten group intended to empower young people to create interactive stories, games, animations and simulations. To achieve this the Scratch language follows a building block paradigm allowing students to avoid the syntactical issues, and focus on experimenting and exploring using computer programming concepts.

The creators believe that the best way to learn is by collaborating and sharing, and a large part of the success of Scratch is the encouragement for students to share their creations online as part of the Scratch Community. Educators are also encouraged to share experiences and learning material within the ScratchEd community.

First released in 2007, and periodically updated and improved, Scratch is available for the Windows and Mac OS X with no charge for non-commercial usage.



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=MIT Media Lab and Lifelong Kindergarten= Scratch was initially created in the MIT Media Media lab, a department contained within the School of Architecture and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As a research organisation the MIT is unique in that nearly 100% of their funding is obtained from industry. To maintain academic flexibility the Media Lab accepts the funding on themes, not project basis. This is demonstrated in the One Laptop per Child project, which is one of the projects to come out of a technology for the developing world theme.

Alot of effort is taken in productising projects through extensive testing and numerous iterations. Scratch is a good example of this philosophy in action, as a number of features originally in the language have been removed based on the results of testing with children.

The group within the MIT Media Lab that are the driving force behind Scratch are a group known as 'The Lifelong Kindergarten group'. At some point the group was inspired by the learning that was taking place by children in kindergartens, while they were having a ball playing with paint and blocks. Within the kindergarten, creativity, fun and media type="youtube" key="knFykmLljos" height="177" width="244" align="right"learning seem to come together more easily than later on in the schooling career. Armed with this insight, and surrounded by many creative groups, they went about attempting to capture the essence of kindergarten. Among one of the projects created was Scratch.

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=Educational Applications= Scratch is not intended to be a prescribed 'one size fits all' teaching aid, but rather as a compliment to current classroom practices or undirected experimentation. While teaching Scratch as a stand alone topic may be a good introduction to students, the actual learning context should be negotiated with students within educational settings. By setting clear guidelines and defined outcomes, without specifying the implementation offers a balance between innovated experimentation and “playing”. Scratch is a positive, interactive, and not to mention fun way for people to create media and to share that media with their peers and community.

The power of Scratch comes from its ability to motivate students by using their own interests, while also abstracting away as many of the boiler plate tasks as possible. While Scratch is aimed at students from 6 to 60, some modifications would be required in an educational setting to account for individual students ages, capabilities and interests. Because of this Scratch has many applications within the educational environment, but it does require that Educators shift their mindset from that of students as passive learners to active creators. Below are a number of different Scratch projects that demonstrate the possibilities spanning the curriculum from presenting reports to interactive stories.



The Lifelong Kindergarten group attempted to follow the kindergarten play learning paradigm when developing Scratch. The following will discuss the research undertaken by the Lifelong Kindergarten group and accepted teaching theory to demonstrate that Scratch is a valid tool which could be used in education.

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Information and Communication Skills
A big push in today's education climate is towards students communicating their ideas to their peers, teachers and community. This indicates that the education sector has an awareness of students being much more rich media focused that in previous generations. Due to the huge changes in education and the technology available, one key task for Educators is to help their students think critically about and to analyse the content of the media they are exposed to, asking questions like "what message am I trying to get across? ","is there a better way to do this?", "What are the purpose of doing this?"

The essence of critical analysis is to determine what message the student was trying to convey, what techniques they used, and if the author managed to achieve, or not achieve, their initial goal. Experience is what separates novices from experts in any field, and Scratch provides media creation opportunities in a experiment friendly manner. Scratch's sharing mechanism allows students access to the scripts used to create projects thus the opportunity to breakdown otherwise complex projects into manageable units is afforded. Students are able to see the makeup of scripts, they can then add on or develop projects further without starting from ground zero. As with any 'sharing' of work proper credit is to be given.

Scratch projects have access to text, images, audio and the ability to manipulate the components overtime. This provides a multitude of ways for students to express themselves creatively and persuasively, in a form that they are much more familiar with from day to day experience. When combined with the fundamental sharing aspect of Scratch, this allows students to feed back to peers, community and teachers in a meaningful manner.

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Thinking and problem solving Skills
The Scratch paradigm is one of a broad-show play. Every program has but a single stage, and one or more actors (or sprites in Scratch parlance) to be used in completing the students goals. Programs are written by providing each sprite and the stage with individualised scripts to read when the start button is pressed. As with a broad-show play, coordination between the actors and stage(hands) is a major aspect of Scratch program creating. It is this blend of systems thinking and critical thinking that provides the challenge to the student and the feeling of success when the problem is solved.

To develop a program in Scratch requires that the student consider the problem at hand and then bring to bare any previous knowledge and strategies to being the outcome to reality. Anything more than the most simple scratch program will need the student to consider how to coordinate the different actors, the more actors, the more complex the coordination becomes. This complexity requires the student to break the coordination problem into small steps and then implementing as Scratch Scripts.

At the start of a project it is not always possible to foresee all problems that will occur. The ability to quickly and easily alter scripts empowers students to think creatively and to seek innovative solutions to the problems that arise during work on their projects. The combination of systems thinking, critical thinking, problem solving, innovation and creativity in the face of unforeseen problem is the core of the Computational Thinking mindset used by Computer Scientists. Wing suggests that “Computational thinking is a fundamental skill for everyone ...[and] we should add computational thinking to every child’s analytical ability.”

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Interpersonal and Self directional Skills
The developers of Scratch believe that the best learning occurs when students are self motivated to learn within a community. As a result they have created an international Scratch community for collaboration which part of it's foundation. From the ability to export sprites with attached scripts, to a menu option to upload the current project directly to the Scratch community website, Scratch is designed so that students become an member of the community. The visual building block style of the Scratch language makes it more readable than text based languages and thus improves the sharing aspects of scripts developed and the ease of understanding what scripts do.

Motivation within any project can be difficult to maintain when problems arise or in the polish phase of a project. Within an educational setting negotiating with the student to use project ideas the student themselves finds personally meaningful provides the motivation and patience to persevere through the design and problem solving process.

By integrating the community aspect into Scratch, students have an audience in mind when they create their projects. This means that they thinking about how other members of the community are likely to react to their work. The ease of readability and changeability of the Scratch scripting language means that any feed back from within the Scratch community is easily integrated into the students project. Singh observed four types of user within a collaboration environment, based on their interactions with others, (Questioners, Answers, Answer Enhancers and Paraphrasers) and each type is critical to the functioning of a community. The international collaboration is one method of guaranteeing that there are enough members of each type for a healthy community. This does not mean that students have to be a part of the international community, as projects can be shared between users without going to the Scratch community. The level of interaction between classroom and wider community that is appropriate within an educational setting is left to the discretion of the individual teacher and educational institute policies.

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=Implication and Theory= There are many theories which could support the use of Scratch in the classroom, the most predominate is the theory of constructivism and the theories stemming from it. Discussion of the terms scaffolding, discovery learning, effective classroom culture for use with Scratch and finally appropriateness from an educational software design perspective will be explored.

Constructivist theory
Constructivism suggests that hands-on learning where the student is left to make their own inferences, discoveries and conclusions within a structured environment. This allows the student to build upon previous knowledge. At its heart, constructivism is the acknowledgment that learning is an iterative process, build and correcting previous knowledge in the face of new experiences.

The collaborative nature of Scratch allows for constructivism to occur between normally disparate groups or communities. The student will create a project to fulfill an objective then they will post it within the local or international Scratch communities. This is then an opportunity for discourse between the student and the selected community, providing a forum for positive or negative external feedback on the project. The building block approach favoured by Scratch allows for rapid development of ideas, and changes to existing projects in the face of new information. This is important as the computer will do exactly what the student tells it to do; not necessarily what the student intended for it to do, which provides learning opportunities. Students may modify projects as a result of interaction with the community, as their project is on show.

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Scaffolding
Another popular theory that has evolved from constructivism and used in education is scaffolding. The essence of this theory is that learning is constructed through experience and is a personal interpretation of the world. It is an active process whereby conceptual growth comes from the negotiation of meaning, sharing of multiple perspectives through collaborative learning. Learning is "scaffolded" by the use of visual tools like virtual realities and encourages social activism ( Roblyer,2004, Ormrod, 2000 , Bruce, 2000 ) The best learning occurs when the situation closely matches a previous experience. With reference to Scratch the teacher is not using the tool to teach but to rather to transform abstract knowledge into understanding through illustration.

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Discovery Learning.
Bruners' Discovery Learning theory is another example of a theory that extends from the base constructivism school of thought. This theory suggests that when a learner explores a problem to discover the rules and solutions themselves ( Eggen & Kauchak, 2001) the knowledge is stored in a manner more readily viable for problem solving. Scratch provides many opportunities for learning by doing in a way that is motivating to the student, which suggests that Discovery Learning is another pedagogy that would be a good fit. The diagram to the right shows how discovery learning applies to learning through Scratch.

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 * ~ Implications for Education ||~ Implications for Scratch ||
 * Learning is intended to be co-constructed that the students are key stakeholders in their own learning || Scratch allows learners to create projects which are relevant to and leverage their interests such as love for music, video games, dancing, etc. ||
 * Constructivism is a hands-on learning paradigm, and as a result learning experiences need to be engaging and meaningful. || When creating projects learning is an active process were learners display their creativity, discover principles, concepts and facts while utilising intuitive thinking which can later be perfected through feedback from others. ||
 * Teaching and learning provides opportunities for real life context using technology that most identifies with the students. The current generation is much more digitally savvy and interconnected that previous generations. || Scratch is built around an online collaboration network. Is assumed that this can help bring learners from their level by showing graphics (sprites) and giving them real life experiences. Animations in Scratch programming helps learners master complex ideas more easily. ||
 * Teachers sets boundaries and negotiate outcomes, while leaving the students to explore and experiment within the subject area. || Scratch provides many different subsystems that can be modified by the student. This allows flexibility for the teacher to set boundaries for particular subsystems (length of time, sprites to use, audio use etc), while still providing opportunities for experimentation. ||
 * Social interactions between teachers and learners as they are involved in learning from each other. || Learners are inspired by other people’s ideas and projects which they can remix and create their own versions. Learner therefore challenged and encouraged to higher order thinking by viewing skills being displayed by other users. ||
 * Collaboration among learners with different skills || Learners are assisted by the teacher and others in their local learning environment and internationally in the scratch community as they share their projects. This provides opportunities to trade ideas, give feedback and discuss different topics. ||

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Participatory Culture
With increased use of new and emerging electronic learning technologies (e-learning), educators continue to struggle with the roles these technologies should play in preparing students for an increasingly global, changing world.

Learners now have access to more information than ever which is presented in various ways including rich multimedia such as animations, simulations and video games. Participatory Culture describes a collaborative environment where not everyone has to contribute, but individuals feel that they can contribute if desired and the contribution will be valued when made. Knowledge is valued within such a community, but it is not horded wth information flowing from experts to novices. These concepts describe the design philosophy and community created by the Lifelong Kindergarten for Scratch.

According to Peppler & Kafai, the idea of a participatory culture "...expands our initial understanding of the older sender/receiver model..." which include skills that are needed for participation and collaboration, such as, "...speaking as well as listening, writing as well as reading and producing as well as consuming...", ( Jenkins, 2006, from Peppler & Kafai 2007). This suggests that students using Scratch as a learning tool gain important skills which help them to be lifelong learners and critical consumers and citizens, all of which are required attributes in the 21st century.

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Educational Game Design Appropriateness
Scratch appears to have a sound grounding in educational theory, however this is no guarantee of appropriateness for classroom use. Adams (2005), a professional video game designer, makes a number of suggestions concerning the design of educational software which could be used to determine Scratch's classroom readiness. The initial form of these points was that of a series of guidelines pertaining to educational video games, as opposed to tools. For the purposes of this comparison it was necessary to modify the guidelines to point format.

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Bright colours are used to differentiate between functions ||
 * ~ Design Goal ||~ Explanation ||~ Examples from within Scratch ||
 * Tools don't teach, they Illustrate || Show the student concepts, don't tell them. || Not appropriate because Scratch doesn't illustrate any particular concept, but is instead intended to empower self discovery learning. ||
 * Don't make tools that are too much fun || If a tool is too much fun, learning becomes secondary to entertainment || Enjoyable for short lengths of time as the concentration required can be tiresome. ||
 * Don't make tools that are not enough fun || Students need to be engaged in what they are doing. || By working with their own ideas students are interested, motivated and engaged in what they are attempt to achieve. ||
 * Appropriate activity time length || Educational environments require software that can be put down and resumed with minimal fuss, at any time. || Scratch can be saved at anytime, and is quick to get the student started. ||
 * Include advisors || Easy access to understandable support within the program || While Scratch does not have an advisor along the lines of the Microsoft Clip art advisor, the help documentation is accessible and appropriate. ||
 * Allow for creative play || Self Explanatory || Scratch is a sandbox environment, which allows for as much creative play as deemed appropriate. ||
 * Appropriate presentation || Clean layout of the interface, users are able to navigate easily. || Scratch's interface is clearly laid out and maintains consistency throughout the application.

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=Support Considerations= When introducing a new tool into any organisation there are a number of considerations that need to be investigated. Ideally information technology concerns would be addressed by the System Administrator, however there are some considerations that the requestor is likely to need answered prior to the installation approval. This section provides a very brief rundown on several items that are likely to arise when talking to peers about integrating Scratch into your environment. The ScratchED community often has [|free workshops] organised to spread the knowledge about the educational needs. ||
 * ~ Consideration ||~ Comments ||
 * Internet capability || Scratch per se, does not require a internet connection to function, however the international collaboration component and project sharing via the 'Share' menu does. It is still possible to share projects between students, it is however a little more complicated and involves copying saved project files around. ||
 * Teacher and Learning aids || The [|ScratchED] community is a collaboration space for Educators to share experiences and lession plans implementing Scratch in the classroom. The [|support page] on the main Scratch collaboration site also contains a number of useful learning aids, including a number of [|downloadable printable cards] that demonstrate clearly how to perform a number of basic tasks.
 * Supported Operating Systems || Scratch is available for Windows and MacOS X operating systems, with a Linux version currently being written. ||
 * Languages || Scratch is currently available in 50 different languages. Unfortunately it is not currently available in Te Reo Maori, but the Scratch community is always looking for [|new translators]. In fact, the translation of Scratch into Te Reo Maori could make for a very rewarding class project. ||

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=Scratch in Practice= Since the inception of Scratch in 2007, more schools, libraries and educational institutions are introducing Scratch as an educational tool. As with most new technologies introduction relys on pioneer educators, librarians and even the students themselves, to get Scratch initially installed within the educational environment. Other than ignorance of its existance, the primary limitation appears to be a belief that the tutors are required to know more than the students before Scratch can be used. The following are a few examples of Scratch being successfully introduced and used in an educational environment.

In Loughton School, four 9 year olds convinced their school to allow them to form a Scratch club in 2008 at lunchtimes, as they had just begun using Scratch at home. The boys created their own lessons for others at their school, preparing each in advance with appropriate resources. For instance one week the lesson was centered around creating a video game, with division of labour between the club members based on their current skill using Scratch. More recently as 10 year olds, the boys entered and won an annual UK competition intended to showcase young learners using technology to support their own learning.
 * Loughton School, United Kingdom**

The One Laptop per Child project aims to bring low cost, usable laptops to children in impoverished areas around the world. In Rwanda 2009, several teams from the OLPC project toured 5 schools to promote the laptop. One of the installed software programs specifically used during this time was Scratch. As the OLPC project typically maintains a default installation between laptop versions, and the Rwandan Government aim for all 1.3 million students between 9 and 12 to have a laptop each by 2012, the number of Scratch users in classroom environments is set to skyrocket.
 * One Laptop per Child Project, Rwanda**

The Hennepin County Library in Minneapolis has been teaching the use of Scratch in workshops as part of the services it offers to their constituents. Initially the staff believed that they needed to know more than the students, but inpractice the key to successful workshops was to encourage students to collaborate over problems and for the staff to ask informed questions. From a technical standpoint, staff have found that you do not need to be an artist, programmer or heavily invested in digital skills to run a workshop, the best learning comes when the students take the lead and the tutors consult on creative issues or solve technical problems with the computers. Scratch even provides employment opportunities for teenagers as the library hires 14 to 18 year olds to run the workshops (along with other digital programs)
 * Hennepin County Library, United States of America**

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