SCRATCH as most know is a block programming language created at MIT. It is an amazing tool to foster student creativity, coding skill, problem solving, and collaboration.
Students over the years have made games, led radio stations, created videos, and demonstrated the behavior of math using SCRATCH.
I advocate for SCRATCH as one important tool in students' tech tool box.
SCRATCH connects students to the world of coding, collaboration, and creativity in ways that matter.
I used SCRATCH to illustrate the behavior of math concepts. The visual, animated modeling works well to illustrate how math concepts behave. I was introduced to the idea of the "behavior of math" when taking Keith Devlin's Stanford Mathematical Thinking Course. That course opened my eyes and mind up to seeing math in a different way, a way that has elevated my teaching and students' understanding. Further I have read studies that support the personalization and animation of concepts with regard to understanding. This is one simple example of how I used SCRATCH in this way. This is another example of the impact SCRATCH has had on our students.
Friedman's recent book, Thank You for Being Late, demonstrates the need for students to become facile and fluent in the language of coding. It is the universal language for the knowledge age we live in. SCRATCH is one, creative inroad to that learning--an inroad that can be coupled with almost any discipline with imagination and creativity to learn well in modern ways.
