We must finally acknowledge that our digital cultures will demand that students do more than consume digital culture - our most successful students will be able to participate in the production of our digital worlds.
Scratch, a visual programming language developed at MIT, has emerged as a very powerful tool to get kids as young as 6 years old coding meaningfully and purposefully.
While working to better understand how software and hardware interact, Chelsea School's middle-division technologists collaborated to create and publish their first puzzle/game. After learning about Scratch, students approached the traditional maze puzzle and re-imagined it for digital culture. Students generated mazes using an online maze generator and processed the maze graphics in an image editor. They hacked together code that recognizes when players touch the lines, and programmed an appropriate resultant action. With the maze puzzle algorithm in place, students could develop game play influenced by successful board game. For example, if players bump into a red spot (the antagonists), the script silently works out “combat” using a random number generator that emulates a die roll. Conditionals than determine whether to reward the player.
High School students at Chelsea School have the opportunity to work with coding concepts such as variables, loops, conditionals, and algorithms through courses like Information Systems Management and Web Design and Development (both completer pathways to graduation).
With this project, middle school students at Chelsea School now share with them an understanding of how actively shape our designed world.
Give our students’ game a try: http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/14703359. Please consider leaving a comment.