Assignment Week #9

I think Scratch would be good for students who are interested in applying creative skills in DIY technology. The web-based tool lets aspiring "makers" to use coded bars that are placed in an interlocking command  to create their own projects, which offers a relatively convenient access for students and educators.

Scratch would help teachers to encourage students to apply programing skills as well as several learning skills with project execution. Lots of students love storytelling, and creating a story on Scratch would have students write, design and animate their own stories. The process would require lots of exploration and experiment in order to make good decisions for an ideal outcome. The characters need to be coded correctly and logically to converse and make visual movements within a story. Creative and logical thinking are involved through out the process that would help students to practice their learning skills in many aspects.

Scratch could also be used for students to create their own games.  It could be a fun assignment to work on for students who are interested in new technology and the digital world. Visual and educational components could be incorporated in a wide variety of settings, such as reaching a higher score by solving easy mathematic or academic problems, or touching some learning goals with the gameplay. Students can also work in groups to complete one game and the process would inspire students to work collaboratively.

Though Scratch might be a good way to introduce programming to all student levels, it seems to me that the tools is best used by educators who have at least a basic programming background. It teaches us how things work together, and how the basic code works in the end. However, I somehow could not engage in my first experience on Scratch as an art making process, and I kept feeling like I could have accomplished the same or even better outcome in a much more flexible way with other digital art forms. In my opinion, Scratch is not necessarily an art medium but more of a digital tool. It is a lot more about the use of programming logic than art making, which might be the reason that I wasn't as interested while working with it.