I am delighted and impressed to hear that my son's primary school is introducing Scratch into the ICT curriculum for Year 6.
"In our first ever Computer Science based unit of work, the children will be learning the fundamentals of programming using an online programming language – Scratch. They will invent a new platform game with their skills and test each other’s games. This is a fantastic new area for the school and one which will really challenge your children’s problem solving skills. If they would like to continue to explore this area of work at home, you can download the Scratch program from the following website:
http://info.scratch.mit.edu/Scratch_1.4_Download
It is free to use and great fun for all the family!"Coincidentally I had just introduced Scratch to him myself and he loves it. He started by just playing around with the program and then I gave him the following book, which I thoroughly recommend.
With this he has been able to follow instructions for ready made programs. He has then adapted them and introduced concepts into his own games. This is how I got started back in the 1980s on a Commodore Vic20 - typing in pages of code from magazines.
Scratch can also be used to control and interact with external devices via a Lego Wedo USB hub and/or a PicoBoard. And to make the homemade games feel a little more authentic, standard USB games controllers can be used via the fantastic Joy2Key program.
I have several projects in mind for my son to assist with and will report back with our results. In the meantime, I am about to fire off a letter to the school offering my help with this exciting development.
Introducing programming such as this into primary schools requires a teacher or two that are very 'e-confident' and I feel very lucky that my son's school has such teachers. If you would like to see such innovation in your own child's school, then check out Code Club which is busy setting up "A nationwide network of volunteer-led after school coding clubs for children aged 9-11".
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