'Scratch'ing The Programmer Pipeline

“As children create with Scratch, they learn to think creatively, work collaboratively, and reason systematically.”  MIT Media Laboratory, Lifelong Kindergarten group

One of the greatest pleasures in what I do is working with young people to create games and animations in Scratch. The Nerd Ninjaz, some as young a 5, have created some incredible (yes I am biased). The project based approach allows young people to move at a speed that is comfortable for them, while using project completion as a success measure instead of how quickly they can grasp a single concept. I challenge them frequently to advance their skills and develop their own game and animations based on what they learn. Coaching them through challenges builds resilience and searching for answers when I don’t have them creates collaborative learning.

Often I’m asked, “What do your Nerd Ninjaz learn or get from the Dojo and from Scratch”. These are just a few of the benefits:

• The Dojo provides a space that provides them freedom to explore and collaborate on projects. I often have students that have learned certain skills coach others and encourage small groups to work on a similar projects to share what they are learning in real time.  
• In Scratch, Ninjaz learn mathematical and computational ideas that are built into the Scratch experience. They learn concepts such as iteration, conditionals, coordinates, variables, and random numbers. The beauty is they learn without immediately recognizing they’re learning or they are creating virtual representations of concepts they’ve learned (x,y coordinates are a sprites address on a graph for example).
• As Ninjaz work on Scratch projects, they learn about the process of design. Typically, a Ninja will start with an idea, create a working prototype, experiment with it, debug it when things go wrong, get feedback from others, then revise, redesign it, and sometimes repeating this whole process multiple times.
• This project-design process includes 21st century learning skills that will be critical to Ninjaz success in the future: thinking creatively, communicating clearly, analyzing systematically, collaborating effectively, designing iteratively, and learning continuously.
• Creating projects in Scratch also helps Ninjaz develop a deeper level of fluency with digital technology. To be fluent with digital technology, you must learn not only know how to interact with the computer/tablet/smartphone but also to create with it.

​Most Ninjaz will not become coders (professional programmers). What Ninjaz gain is increased confidence in their ability to learn, improve their ability to express their ideas creatively, to think more logically. By 2021, I want to see 10,000 young people from Metro Atlanta with these skills that will have a profound impact on their future and the future of Atlanta. Efforts like Power My Learning's App Challenge and others are helping feed the pipeline. Let's get them there together.

William Teasley
Nerd Ninja Sensei
T: @WilliamHGEI