Why+Scratch

toc =Why Scratch?=

Creativity
//Scratch is designed to help young people (ages 8 and up) develop 21st century learning skills. As they create Scratch projects, young people learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also gaining a deeper understanding of the process of design.// [|Source]

media type="google" key="-6387780251240071146&hl=en-AU" width="400" height="326" Watch the first 5.5 minutes of this Google Talk.

[|Learning by Designing (PDF)]

So the key is creativity - we are talking about HOTS.

media type="custom" key="268785" 2 minute video

If all that does not convince you then check this out [|From Scotland to Stockton, Learning Scratch] [|Supplementing My Kids’ Education]

Versatile
It is a tool that can be used for simple beginnings and has the scope to take students to complex problem solving and then onto industrial strength languages

> //Scratch is designed to help young people (ages 8 and up) develop 21st century learning skills.// > [|Source]

> //We present in this paper the motivation for and results of our deployment in higher education of Scratch, a new programming environment that empowers students to implement animations, games, and interactive art. Based on our experience with just over two dozen students in Harvard Summer School’s Computer Science S-1: Great Ideas in Computer Science, we propose Scratch as a viable gateway to languages like Java. Not only does Scratch excite// //students at a critical time (i.e., their first foray into computer science), it also familiarizes the inexperienced among them with fundamentals of programming without the distraction of syntax.// > [|Source]

Why games at school
> //Literature on school improvement is full of exhortations to make the content of instruction "relevant." …….. But if one does belong to a culture in which video games are important, transforming oneself from a consumer to a producer of games may well be an even more powerful way for some children to find importance in what they are doing.//

[| Games programming can be justified on three grounds],
 * 1) transferable cognitive skills,
 * 2) metacogitive skills and
 * 3) affective benefits:

ICT Skills shortage
There is a well documented ICT skills shortage in the western world that has been happening since about 2000.

Scratch is consistent with the sorts of creative skills needed. It is fun and enables younger students to be excited by the sorts of things that ICT professionals do.