1. Dr. Fadjo's presentation - what did you
learn, interesting items, etc.
On
April 30th, Dr. Cameron L. Fadjo from
Columbia University introduced us to the concept of promoting literacy through
Scratch. And though I had known about literacy and
its components before, it was a good reminder to me that literacy is not
limited to comprehension only, but also includes production and communication.
Hence, we can enhance our teaching effectiveness by having students create
something based on the given knowledge (synthesize) and communicate their ideas
and insights using Scratch. Unfortunately, Dr. Fadjo did not share with us
hands-on examples of the projects he did with this students in the past, so I
wish his presentation had been more practical. However, he skillfully
demonstrated the perfect technique of teaching when the teacher poses a
question (gives a task) and students are to find the answer(s) on their own. It
reminded me of the Socrates method of teaching.
2. Your thoughts and
reflection on using scratch yourself, difficulties, how did you figure it out,
did you find helpful resources, etc.
Not having had any prior
programming experience, I was rather intimidated by Scratch when Dr. Fdjo had
us learn the ropes of the program. Moreover, the perspective of creating the
project remained daunting to me until I started exploring LearnScratch.
This resource put me at ease and did not leave any single question. Even the
timing was a cakewalk to me. Later on, when I started recording my own voice, I
realized that there was always hissing that had to be removed. So I starting
googling a program that would reduce noise and discovered Audicity. Numerous youtube videos on noise reduction in Audicity allowed me to learn this
tool within a reasonable amount of time. Nevertheless, I was also planning to
find a program that would allow to change the pitch and tone of my voice, to
convert into a male or/and a child voice, and to add a specific accent.
Unfortunately, I could not figure out how to make a couple of such programs
work on my computer and pressed for time, gave up. However, this experience
taught me that there are programs allowing to modify speaker's pitch and tone,
but there is no one yet that would modify an accent. So the time spent was worthwhile
as well. 
As for Scratch itself,
the most time-consuming for me was to cut the characters out of the picture I
found online while preserving the background as intact as possible. It probably
took me 3-4 hours at least. It would have been easier to do it with Photo shop,
whose trial version had just expired on my PC, than Scratch, but I survived.
3. How could scratch be used in the classroom - is it easily
applicable to all academic areas such as math, science, social studies,
language arts, art, etc?
I believe that Scratch
is a wonderful tool, tapping into numerous multiple intelligences: logical (working
with the timing), special (creating a background), musical (choosing or
creating music), linguistic (composing scripts), etc. And there is no doubt that
Scratch can be applied in various academic areas, such as math, science, social
studies, language arts, art, etc. My only (and quite justifiable concern) is
that it takes some significant time to learn its commands and options.
4. Would you use it with your students? Why or Why not?
It is unlikely that I
would use Scratch with my adult students, who have numerous critical needs and
challenges aside from Scratch and for whom the lack of time is a constant
problem. However, I will give them the links to Scratch resources so that they
could use it to promote their children's literacy at home. Who knows, they
could employ Scratch for their own projects in the future.
Unlike adult education,
where there is never enough time to meet the most essential student needs,
public schools might be a better environment to apply Scratch in. And provided
that this tool is used wisely and thoughtfully, it can be very beneficial for
students.
I feel that I have just
scratched the surface of endless possibilities Scratch offers, and after using
it in the upcoming lesson plan, our connections might get stronger. And who
knows where this journey will bring me next!
0 comments:
Post a Comment