I offer privately scheduled workshops/tutoring in software design and development using MIT’s Scratch programming language for kids aged 10-14. We’ll focus on core programming concepts, embedded in a curriculum of creative expression, stories, and games, and driven by participants’ interests. Contact me.
A workshop series consists of six 90-minute sessions in a group setting. Groups are limited to six participants. Each meeting will combine two segments: focused instruction using demonstrations and activities to teach specific concepts; and open-ended work on a long term project which attendees will design, plan, develop, test, debug, and revise. The instructional component will draw from the Scratch Creative Computing Curriculum developed at the Harvard GSE (http://scratched.gse.harvard.edu/guide/) and is adaptable to a wide range of prior knowledge about programming and Scratch. The long term project component will introduce kids to the software design and development process as practiced in the work world. Kids will advance their specific knowledge of Scratch while gaining exposure to engineering and design practices that are fundamental to future mathematics and science education.
Workshops are led by Jason Innes (http://jasoninnes.com/). I’m a Harvard graduate and a professional IT consultant and software developer in biotech and pharma, with a passion for educational technology in general and kids’ programming in particular. For the last two years I’ve run an afterschool Scratch Club at my kids’ school (a K-5 public school in Cambridge), facilitated a series of family-based Scratch workshops run out of the MIT Media Lab, and been active in the ScratchEd community of Scratch educators and advocates. I love sharing my love of programming with kids, and I’ve found Scratch to be a great fit for kids at a wide range of programming skill levels.
More About Scratch: Scratch is a highly visual educational programming language developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at MIT’s Media Lab (http://scratch.mit.edu). It’s aimed at kids aged 8-16. Despite being designed for kids learning programming, Scratch is nevertheless a sophisticated and full-featured language and development environment. With Scratch kids can learn fundamental concepts in computational thinking (such as sequencing, decomposition, and representation) and computer science techniques (such as algorithms, parallelism, loops, and conditionals.
Contact me to discuss setting up a private workshop series for your group!