Information Technology Education

Interview with student 'T' about the process of making a game on Scratch: The challenge was I had the whole theme and how I was going to make the game in my head, but the problem was I didn't know how to make "lives."  So I tried a few games on Scratch until I found one I liked and went onto 'remix.'  And then found out how they did lives.  I found out they made lives as a variable and then I had lives, but the only problem was, it kept going after 'death' so I had to look at the game a little bit more that I had gotten lives off and then I found one thing that I was missing. (what was missing?) I forgot to put in one block that when lives went to 'zero' I forgot to put in the block 'stop all.' I also had a thing that when lives reached 'zero' I had it go to a different background and that was the background I labeled 'destroy' because that is when the spaceship is dead.  I went on and it was done.  I went on to its ...

Started Scratching with my 3/4 graders following the creative computing curriculum from MIT media lab and the design-based learning approach.  Students are creating an e-design notebook to document their experience along the way.  First session was viewing the intro video and then discussing what makes Scratch different from other computer experiences - play vs. create etc. Next session was students brainstorming three things they could show about themselves in an "All About Me" Scratch project - photos, videos, sprites, change background Students are also using Scratch for science (zoogle) project and in ELA by using it to show an example of figurative language (idiom, pun, etc) Quotable quotes: H: (when about to show me his Scratch) - I didn't really test this one... A: (in the background) Then it's not going to work if you didn't test it... Mrs. M:  What makes you say it's not going to work if you don't test? A:  Because you have do some, then test or e...