Scratch: A New Way to Program

The Making of A Car

Wikipedia is one of several resources that students should be encouraged to use in the classroom. Using one resource or reference book as the only source is inappropriate for an assignment. When two or three sources are required to complete an assignment, the student might discover that the resources provide conflicting reports. The student needs to evaluate the information to decide which source is correct.

Before an assignment is underway, teachers need to advise students about vandalism in open source documents. They should review how to spot a valid source in Wikipedia as well as other websites. Andy Carvins’, article Turning Wikipedia into an Asset for Schools, writes “some entries will have a scrupulous list of sources cited and a detailed talk page on which Wikipedians debate the accuracy of information presented in order to improve it. Others, though, will have no sources cited and no active talk pages. To me, this presents teachers with an excellent authentic learning activity in which students can demonstrate their skills as scholars.” 

Educators should work toward making a free encyclopedia a worthwhile project. What does the average school spend each year on databases for their Library Media Center? Are the historical events published in these databases unbiased? Are the original sources used in the earlier volumes of encyclopedias stacked on library shelves any more reliable than the living sources who contribute to the open source communities? Perhaps we have accepted what is written in our earlier volumes of encyclopedias as gospel when in fact the reliability of these resources should be questioned as well. Wikipedia is new and still evolving; we need to give it a chance.

Initially our school used the Internet filter system in the most restrictive way possible. Our current practice is to educate the students to use these sites more responsibly. In the past two years we have not filtered YouTube so the situation described in the lesson would not exist at my school. Our administrators feel that there is educational value in many of the YouTubes videos and have actually encouraged staff to use them in class. They also stress the fact that teachers need to discuss with students what is responsible and safe Internet behavior.

We had the same issues with Google images a few years back. Inappropriate images would often appear in a search. We had to decide whether to completely block Google images or educate students to use the tool in a school appropriate manner. As a staff we chose to educate our students on what to do when an inappropriate image was displayed.

Teachers who work in districts that filter everything need to have an open discussion with their administrators. Oftentimes the IT people make the decision to block the sites. The decision on what should and should not be blocked should be school based.

The teacher tantrum that students videoed on their cell phones was certainly disturbing, however, blocking YouTube would not have stopped the incident from taking place.

How students could use YouTube to embarrass teachers and students is drawing discussion at our faculty meetings. We produce a video for 8^th grade students at the end of the year. Students can buy the video and the profits are targeted for technology purchases in the LMC. The concern is that someone would post the video to YouTube. We are not sure how to work around this other than to stop the sale of the video.

My 6^th graders are using a program called Scratch. The program is fairly new and there are very little advanced help documents to assist new users. I would like to use a blog so my students could become a team of “subject matter experts” by explaining how they created a game or activity using Scratch. How did they come up with the idea? What did they encounter along the way? Students can share any programming issues to help others avoid these mistakes. Are there any basic tips to share about the program?

This practice would help students think through the process they used to reach their final goal and reflect on what they learned.

I really do not see any hurdles if I take the advice of T.H.E. Journal article Content Delivery in the ‘Blogosphere which suggests that a teacher “spend several sessions introducing the concept of blogging, how it is done, why it is done, showing good and bad blogs, etc. Then, provide a set of strict rules for blogging such as frequency, length of posts, number of hyperlinks and staying on topic.” My principal and district administrators are very open to introducing Blogs and respect the educational value they provide. They are very excited about any teacher implementing this tool.