Scratch - The Ducks Guts

I have posted previously that I think that Scratch is fantastic. It’s now the Ducks Guts. I downloaded the latest version in preparation for Scratch Day (http://limestonecoast-scratchers.wikispaces.com/Scratch+Day+2010)

It now has string manipulation commands, command to gain input for variables via the keyboard and commands to control lego.

You can create and manipulate lists (arrays)

Linux version now also available along with PC and Mac.

Release notes - http://info.scratch.mit.edu/Scratch_1.4_Release_Notes

I believe that there is now no better tool to teach programming available.. Impossible to make syntax errors, only logical errors and programming is about thinking and creativity so it’s the Ducks Guts.

I would love to work with someone who is an authority on the new SACE curriculum statement to determine if we can use Scratch for SACE2.

I would not be surprised if more tertiary/unis pick up Scratch as a way of introducing the thinking around programming via Scratch.

Scratch with Year 9 boys

I have a class of year 9 boys doing IT. We decided to have a play with Scratch and are well into it. I asked them to write down three words that best describes their experience with Scratch to date.

The following words were used more than once
Boring 3
Cool 4
Exciting 2
Fun 11
Good way 2
Interesting 7
Learn 3

36 of the words used were positive and 6 were negative.

NZ Ministry of Justice discussion paper

http://nzoss.org.nz/system/files/moj_oss_strategy_1.0.pdf

Two of the quotes from this paper are of particular interest

The Ministry has stated its commitment to be an 'employer of choice' for skilled technical professionals. Adopting OSS in development and deployment is consistent with such a commitment. (Put bluntly, technical professionals want to keep their skills sharp and current; in 2007, working with open source tools and contributing to OSS projects are the way that's done.)

Broader issues within NZ government related to economic development. More widespread adoption of OSS is a form of 'Buying Kiwi' by means of encouraging growth of NZ-based software and service providers.

Could it be that a contributing factor to the high level skills shortage that we are facing is government sector preference for the use of proprietary solutions where the high level skills are effectively imported?

How to rejuvenate IT Studies

IT Studies or in some quarters, Computing Studies. Mark Guzdial has recently conributed two posts to his views about "Software Engineering and the Cause of the CS Enrollment Crisis"

1. Part 1
2. Part 2

Mark's posts are to do with tertiary level education.

Part 1
Mark's diagnosis

It seems to me that the cause of the student's disdain for "programming" and for the decline in CS enrollment lies there. As civil engineers need armies of construction workers to build their designs, and as mechanical engineers use armies of factory workers to produce their designs, so do software engineers use armies of programmers or coders, people who are explicitly not software engineers, to produce their designs. Few students go to college to become construction or factory workers. Why should it be surprising, then, that few Western students want to go to college to be the Information Age equivalent workers?

Boring and mundane - lack of creativity.

Computer scientists do not need to write good, clean code. Science is about critical and creative thinking

No fun

Our students want to be creative, not mundane. Many want to push hardware to do things that no one has ever thought about. Many want to explore new forms of expression. That is what computer science is about. That is not necessarily what software engineers need.

Part 2

Creativity

Realizing one's designs is motivating.

Summary.
He argues that we take care with the language that we use to teach programming. Use C based languages is a no go. Translating this to secondary school. Programming needs to be fun and encourage creativity.

I run a course called 'Negotiated Computing'. Students come to this class wanting to learn something about computers. For many that's as detailed as it gets but for others they want to learn HTML, Javascript, PHP, ..........

Students negotiate their learning contract and away we go.

The interesting thing is that I have a range of 'traditional' tutorials for these sorts of things and they are not particularly popular except for lesson 1. For example, in lesson 1 of PHP, students get a login to the LiveLAMP server, find out about the ftp settings and that's about the last I see of them in that course.

They are downloading code that others have made, uploading it to the server and trying to get it to work. This is particularly challenging for me as there is inevitably things that don't work and so we are looking at line 45 wondering why? It is hard because I am looked on as the expert and I should know the answer. I guess I get to model how I solve problems, offer an hypothesis and try out some solutions. Sometimes we win quickly, sometimes it takes longer and at other times we don't win at all and have to move on. We end up with chat, picture galleries and all sorts of things. They love to then get others to use the thing that they have got to work and then we see some modifications being made.

I guess I did the same thing 25-30 years ago. I used books with code, copied these and tried to get them to work. It took some time before I felt OK about trying to create something original.

This approach does not fit in with the formal senior secondary Information Technology syllabus. It does fit very nicely with Community Studies.

The future of senior secondary ICT

Published by The Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts
in June 2006 is a document called 'Building Australian ICT Skills - Report of the ICT Skills foresighting working group'

Page 10 of this document is in the 'Key findings and recommendations' section and deals with ICT in Schools.

The Working Group expressed concerns that the quality of ICT teaching in schools, and the outmoded image of ICT work presented, may be deterring students from considering ICT as an option for further study at university/TAFE and as a career choice. This was an issue that also received considerable attention at the partICipaTion Summit.

In particular the Working Group raised concerns about the teaching of ICT as a specialised subject in the later school years. The Working Group considered that the focus should be on teaching fundamental ICT principles, useful as a foundation for further study, rather than on specific programming areas.

It then goes on to make the following recommendation

Recommendation 7
The Working Group recommends that action be taken to review and enhance the teaching of ICT in schools. The working group suggests that:
• government fund detailed research on school ICT teachers to assess the characteristics (e.g. gender, age), qualifications and challenges of ICT secondary and high school teachers; and
• ICT industry bodies and leading ICT vendors work with education agencies and professional bodies to assist and support school ICT teachers and teaching staff in universities and TAFEs.

As a current 'later school years' ICT teacher I have an interest in the implications of the above statement. They say that the focus for my work 'should be on teaching fundamental ICT principles, useful as a foundation for further study, rather than on specific programming areas.' They reckon that schools "may be deterring students from considering ICT as an option for further study' because of 'the quality of ICT teaching in schools, and the outmoded image of ICT work presented'.

At this stage I just want to note this and reflect on it for a while. My gut reaction is that

• fundamental principles have always been what I was after
• programming areas is important for accessibility reasons - industry standards are bit like bathing costume seasonal fashions - important but doesn't need to prevent you from taking a dip.
  
• it adds weight to Bill Kerr's thinking and work around the advantages of using Squeak in secondary education (and mine in the related Scratch)
• my ideas for an IT student online community have had significant reinforcement
  

Final thought
A department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts?
Struggling to see the relationship. Why not stick Immigration in there as well? Or should it be called the Department for bits that we couldn't put anywhere else.

Scratch Day

Last weekend was partially devoted to playing with Scratch and the result of this effort is a little game to help students familiarise themselves with the Computer System Block Diagram

Learn more about this project

There are two sprites in this game that have not been scripted yet. Students can download the game and use the code from the other sprites to make these unscripted sprites operational.

I love Scratch and I love the fact that I can so easily upload and share it. It is not hard to embed it in blogs or I suspect Moodle. I like the way it then plays in the browser. There is a problem uploading Scratch games to the Scratch site from school as there is no way that we can adjust Scratch to our required proxy settings. This is an issue for many schools I would think.

Then I added TeacherTube to the mix. I created a screen capture movie of me explaining how this game worked using CamStudio. I'm very impressed with CamStudio as a free tool for this job. Then Super C was used to reduce the filesize from 108MB to 10MB by reducing the resolution to 640x480. I tried Videora first and while this was easy to use, it produced a product with a resolution that too low to be useful. Thanks to Leigh for his advice on using Videora or SuperC to compress the video. Both of these tools are also free.



I reckon that I could teach SACE 1 Information Technology Systems - Multimedia Programming and Computer Conepts units in an integrated way. Students could use Scratch to create Learning Objects relating to Computer Concepts.