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In college I took a single credit Scratch class where we'd go out in the community and teach an after-school lesson for about an hour once a week to 4th and 5th
by alextheparrot 9y ago
In college I took a single credit Scratch class where we'd go out in the community and teach an after-school lesson for about an hour once a week to 4th and 5th graders. Honestly, it was one of the best parts of my semester. Seeing them grow and explore was fantastic.
In line with the hacker ethic, we decompiled Minecraft as a demo and started playing around with the jump math with them. It instantly clicked, based on their experience moving Scratch characters, what the changes we were doing were going to do before we ran it. That's a powerful link, even if they didn't realize that "jumping to the clouds" still causes fall damage (Which was subsequently turned off in the code).
- jnicholasp 9y agoDo you mind sharing what college this was at? My email is on my profile if you prefer. My nephews are in elementary school, and we're right next to the local university. I'd love to see if we could get a program like that going here.
- alextheparrot 9y agoHere's a link to the course webpage that might be helpful: https://sites.google.com/site/uwmadisoncsafterschool/ https://sites.google.com/site/uwmadisoncsafterschool/. Andrea (Her email is at the bottom of the linked page) is great and also teaches a "Grandparent University" in Scratch where grandparents come with their grandchildren and learn to program together.
- jnicholasp 9y agoExcellent, thanks so much.