Scratch is a visual programming language and development environment designed by MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) for children and adolescents between the ages of 5 and 16, focusing on achieving simple animation effects through programming. The purpose of Scratch is to “create and share your own interactive stories, games, music, and art”. The focus is to gradually cultivate the ability of teenagers’ creative thinking, logical thinking, and cooperative learning, so that children can develop the habit of self-analysis and problem-solving in future learning.
However, with the continuous updating and iteration of science and technology, relying solely on lectures cannot let children master many skills needed in practice. The birth of Scratch has injected new elements into the information technology classroom.
When you make a product or implement a function, you need to consider many details. For example, how to design the framework reasonably according to the needs? With the framework, how can we design corresponding categories to facilitate future expansion or improve reusability? When you begin to write specific functions, you should also carefully consider what exceptions exist and how to design them to achieve the best results. Therefore, programming practice can not only effectively stimulate students’ interest in program design, but also exercise their logical thinking ability, which will accompany children’s life. At the same time, Scratch is also a process of designing products while creating, so it can cultivate children’s innovative spirit.
At present, more than 150 people in different countries or regions are using Scratch, which is available in more than 40 different languages.
Learning from Scratch helps cultivate students' initiative and exploration spirit.
The simple and intuitive advantages of Scratch provide students with a solid platform for inquiry learning. The process of creation involves knowledge from Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Maths, and other fields. For example, the teacher first proposes a development task, and students can explore the meaning of each instruction by guessing, trying, verifying, and summarizing various methods to meet this task.
Learning Scratch helps cultivate students' logical thinking abilities.
Cultivating students’ logical thinking abilities is very important for their future growth. When children learn Scratch programming, it involves a lot of mathematical knowledge. Children need to combine the mathematical knowledge learned in school to solve programming problems. In Scratch, the training of logical thinking ability can be integrated into specific creative situations, so that students can gradually develop abstract logical reasoning in the process of practice, thus forming a certain logical thinking ability.
Learning Scratch helps stimulate students' creative ability.
Scratch is easy to learn and powerful. Its rich objects, cartoon shapes, colors, instructions, and interactions naturally inspire students’ imaginations. It helps children develop their imagination. In the process of hands-on creation, students’ enthusiasm, imagination, and creativity will be greatly exercised. Students of different ages and different levels of knowledge can use the Scratch platform to realize their own imagination and creation. Children can use the existing materials in Scratch to make games and animations with their own imagination, and can also design their own materials.
Many advantages of Scratch give us a choice in educating children. Both teachers and parents should guide students to explore independently, actively think and summarize in the process of practice, and let students boldly assume, explore and verify their own ideas in combination with the characteristics of simple operation and easy understanding of Scratch. At the same time, give students enough space to solve problems with their own way of thinking. Many habits of children are developed during childhood. Therefore, programming is an educational means that I think is very effective at present and adapts to children at all stages and abilities.
