It's that time of year again, and I have a new class of fresh-faced 6th graders in my computer class. We meet 3 times a week for a trimester, then I get the next set of students.
Last week we started Scratch. If you're not familiar with Scratch, it's a programming environment built on Squeak from the Lifelong Kindergarten lab at MIT. Actually, I don't even tell the students that they're programming. All they know is that it's fun!
It's what Seymour Papert calls "hard fun". Like a game, it rewards success quickly and sends you on to the next challenge. We are working towards building our own games, though at this point the students are learning the basics through the excellent resources at www.redware.com/scratch. I usually start with the Dog and Crab "game", since it's pretty simple. It's hardly a game, since there isn't much of an objective, and there's no way to keep score. It's also ridiculously easy to play. After that, we move on to the Fish game, which is several steps harder. Right now most students are building the Fish game.
The excitement in the room is palpable. Some students asked if they could come to class early to work on Scratch. One said that it was the best experience of his life! Yikes. What I love about it is that the learning is intense, but completely engaging. In that way, it reminds me of our other unit: Lego robotics.
You can find out more at scratch.mit.edu.
