This workshop was something I really wanted to catch due to our students having the XO Laptops with Scratch installed.  I also wanted to meet Chris Betcher whom I had met once before in Quest Atlantis during a PL session run by Bron Stuckey! Chris Betcher ran this workshop and entertained us all with his anecdotes about his students and the things that can be achieved in the new version of Scratch 2.0. The workshop itself is here including all of the activities and there are some which have open-ended ideas which kids can explore. Chris mentioned to us that we should really register on the Scratch site as there is a community of sharing and mentoring which has already emerged and in which people are more than happy to help each other if there is a question needing to be answered. Again – the emergence of just in time and situated learning in evidence!

I really enjoyed getting hands on in Scratch and even more surprised to find that there are the same tools available in Scratch as there were in Logo – I just hadn’t explored it enough to know what all of the tool sets were and how to access them – there’s even a wallpaper which gives the XY coordinate map to make it easier to set the pen coordinates if you wish to draw geometrical shapes etc. There are also sprites which you can code and use to create games and movies. Interestingly also – when you are registered on the Scratch site you can borrow and modify the code of other people in your own project space! What a great example of just in time and situated learning!

Chris also mentioned that Scratch can be used to program a Picoboard. He demonstrates this here. He also told us that there is a way to use Scratch 2.0 offline. I found the instructions here.

All in all I thoroughly enjoyed being able to sit down and complete the activities in this workshop. It, and the webinar I listened to this morning as part of Connected Educator Month,  has given me the desire to try and introduce The Hour of Code at my school this year, to develop a Day of Code on a Saturday early in 2015 and perhaps also to register to become a CoderDojo site in 2015. Coding is being discussed more and more as a way of furthering the development of a community of learners. I can see why! This workshop also tied in well with my workshop on the Digital Technologies Curriculum in Day 2.