Coding 29.01.19 | Abbie's Reflective Journal

This week’s class focused on programming and coding resources in the classroom, which can deliver cross curricular learning. I used an iPad to create an animation on the app ‘Scratch Junior’. According to the ‘Scratch’ website (Scratch Jr, 2019), “coding is the new literacy”, which highlights the change required in many Scottish classrooms. (Prensky, 2001, p.1) underlines the radical change in pupils’ lifestyle, and therefore the need for a change in the way they are taught in relation to the education system. As coding now is a part of a child’s everyday life, it is essential they learn the skills required to understand and excel in this.

Many skills can be acquired when coding within ‘Scratch’, for example creative thinking skills, logical problem solving skills and team work skills are all developed; “As young people create Scratch projects…they are learning to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively.” (The Lead Project, 2014). Again, in a classroom in the 21^st century, this is key to develop skills in many curricular areas such as mathematics, English, music and information technology.

I have previously used ‘Scratch’ during ICT in high school, but I have always struggled with the software in comparison to my peers, which caused me a lot of anxiety as I would always be significantly behind the rest of my class. I was therefore quite apprehensive about using ‘Scratch’ again today. When creating my own animation today, I focused on delivering two Curriculum for Excellence outcomes; SCN 0-01a: “I have observed living things in the environment over time and am becoming aware of how they depend on each other.” TCH 0-03a: “I explore software and use what I learn to solve problems and present my ideas, thoughts or information.” (Education Scotland, 2019).

My animation begins with two children in a classroom asking the pupils to help them explore different animals’ habitats. In the next slide, the children visit the desert and ask pupils what animals they can see. Before the speech icon for “camel and lizard” appears, I programmed 20 seconds of ‘thinking time’ for pupils to discuss what animals they see and why this is their habitat. Also, as a teacher I would encourage pupils to discuss what other animals they would find in this particular habitat during the thinking time programmed. My next two slides are set as backgrounds of the Arctic and underwater and both work in the same way, I would repeat this process of asking pupils what else they might see and why this is the habitat of those animals.

As the teacher is the main resource of my activity and scratch accompanies this to enhance learning, an aspect of further independent learning to include is to provide pupils with their own device and ask them to create their own habitat slide and animate the animals they think would live there, which would encourage them to explore more habitats and improve their digital skillset.

Overall, my experience with Scratch Jr today was very positive, however as there were only four possible slides to create I found this limiting as I had many more ideas to add to enhance the topic. I also had some timing issues as I wanted to allow children thinking time between characters’ actions, this issue was easily solved by discussing with my peers and figuring out how to effectively use the “stop watch” control. Other than these few issues, I found the ‘Scratch Jr’ app relatively easy to operate, especially in comparison to my high school experience with ‘Scratch’. There was a good selection of characters and backgrounds, as well as many possible controls, which were all colour coded to make the app easy to navigate. This workshop has changed my opinion on ‘Scratch’ and I am now much more confident in coding, and am aware of the importance of this in the curriculum. I think that this app has the potential to be a very valuable resource in the classroom when used effectively, not only to deliver technology outcomes, but to deliver cross curricular learning. As a student teacher, I can see myself using this to deliver lessons and plan activities.