Erika Norton | Echo
Fifth-grade students from Eastbrook Elementary School have the unique opportunity to learn key computer skills from Taylor professors this semester. Scratch, a basic programming software developed by MIT, will be used to visually engage with different school subjects, helping students gain better understanding through creative media.
More than 50 fifth-grade students from Eastbrook South Elementary School visited the Taylor campus for the first time Sept. 24.
Stefan Brandle, professor of computer science and engineering at Taylor, explained the main goal when using Scratch with the students.
"The idea is we'd like to get young kids to not just be consumers of digital media, but to learn how to produce it," Brandle said.
With this in mind, Brandle contacted two of the fifth grade teachers at Eastbrook, who enthusiastically jumped on the idea and started planning.
The goal for this program is to start with the fifth-grade class this fall. If it goes well, and it has so far, the program will begin to expand. Spring semester Taylor will offer the Scratch class to sixth-graders.
The next year, the department is looking to add two more grades, bringing it up to a grand total of four. At the end of three years time, Brandle and his associates are hoping to offer classes to grades one through six. However, Scratch will not be offered to each grade.
"To keep it simple and easy on the departments, a department would always offer the same thing. So we would always do fifth-grade Scratch," Brandle said.
As an example, to compliment the third grade class reading a detective novel in class, perhaps they could visit the vhemistry department's forensics class.
"Eventually, we would have grades one through six every year, at different times. They would all come down to Taylor and do something," Brandle said.
Brandle explained how the Scratch program fulfills many of the curriculum requirements elementary teachers have to cover.
"(The teachers) said that in the state curriculum, they are supposed to be addressing creativity and logical thinking," Brandle said. "There are a number of areas that (teachers) are supposed to both cover and to be able to explain to somebody, 'How it is we addressing creativity? How are we addressing logical thinking?' And they said that Scratch actually addressed a pretty significant number of the things that they were supposed to be doing."
One of the other positive things teachers are finding is that using Scratch enriches students' learning. Teachers are able to convince students to interact with each of their normal class subjects more, in new, engaging ways. Through this, new areas of course integration were created, like visual poetry in one example.
One illustration Brandle mentioned was a video made by an autistic boy. He had taken the classic Lewis Carroll poem 'Jabberwocky' and set it to animation, including sound effects, movement and the lines of the poetry on screen.
"What is happening is that kids who didn't like poetry start to get into it," Brandle said. "Teachers have been able to teach geometry, science, weather systems, physics simulations, grammar and almost anything else you can imagine."
The concept for this program was planted about six years ago, when, in 2007, Brandle had heard of Scratch, but didn't really know what it was. While he was attending a conference that year, he decided to attend a session about Scratch.
When he entered the lecture room, he was surprised to find the two presenters on stage were middle schoolers.
"There were 50 to 60 people in the room and these two kids did the whole presentation, and they did really, really good," Brandle said.
Brandle was given a copy of the program and left the lecture intrigued. Arriving home after the conference, he showed the software to his kids, who instantly fell in love with it.
"I realized 'Hey, kids really get into this,'" Brandle said. "That summer, at Taylor's Summer Academy, I said, 'Hey, lets do Scratch!'" And the rest was history.
