Fellow Baldwin Scratch Club runner Bob Gillig and I have been working with the Baldwin 5th grade teachers to conduct a Scratch-based unit in their classroom. The idea is to “sneak” computer science and Scratch exposure into the regular curriculum by having the kids do a social studies report in the form of a Scratch project built from templates we built for them. This eases the novices into Scratch while allowing the kids who have more prior experience to serve as empowered/expert peer guides. We kicked it off this past Friday with an intro session which the kids seemed to enjoy.
I have a particular interest in helping kids see computers as creative tools. So, as part of the kickoff we gave the kids a brief attitudinal survey as a pre-assessment. The survey asked their gender and prior experience with Scratch, then asked them to what degree they agreed with the statements “I can use computers to make things” and “I could be a computer programmer.” Graphs of the results are below.
I thought the very strong correlation between prior Scratch experience and feeling that “I can use computers to make things” was a great sign that Scratch is successful in its role as an empowering creative tool.
Also notable is the unfortunate correlation between gender and agreement with “I could be a computer programmer.” Here’s hoping our Scratch unit helps even that out in some small way. We shall see when the post-assessment data comes in!