SIMON’S REPORT 17: ‘Scratching’ the Surface
Monday: Ntugi Secondary
The past week was so successful with the introduction of the Scratch Activity to some of the institutions for the first time. One of the schools where I introduced it was Ntugi Secondary, where I had made a demo project just to show them how it could work. The project was a kind of a tutorial presentation that can be used in teaching the names of different things in the environment.
It had a script of an imported, pre-drawn ‘costume’ or sprite of a teacher teaching in front of a background of a blackboard.
As the Scratch animation runs, different items appear on the screen and the teacher says their names as they appear.
After this section is complete, the teacher then evaluates the user/player.
She asks the player the names of the pictures as they appear once more.
and the
The person using the laptop has to type in the correct name for the objects and hit ‘enter’.
The program only allows for the correct answer for one to score points.
I haven’t yet figured what to do if someone answers incorrectly!
They were so eager to know the way to create such a project like the one I had demonstrated… but the main problem for them was to have them put the programming instructions into the script in the order in which the which they should be executed. They were a bit impatient and din’t really understand the sequencing and cause that they need to in order to make the Sprite behave as they want!
To solve this, I plan on having a class on flow charts where I can have the students make a flow chart of the instructions first before entering them into the laptop from the Scratch menu of instructions.
Tuesday: Ngare Ndare Secondary/Lewa Primary
At Ngare Ndare, the teachers were occupied, but I involved students in a shared Speak activity where they discussed through a voice chat some questions in chemistry. The challenge here again was the typing speed but with few lessons on Typing Turtle, I think this will be solved.
At Lewa Primary the teachers were learning on how to word process word on the XO, and Gnome operating system. They hope that once the school gets power they will be typing exams for the students. They didn’t complete the document and they saved to the Gnome desktop to continue with it on next Wednesday.
Wednesday: Subuiga Primary
I also introduced Scratch to the Subuiga teachers and we are working for the same project I have talked of earlier the basis for tutorials to help in teaching. We were able, together with the teachers involved, to come up with the required pictures and next step is to teach them to control the movement of these in Scratch.
Thursday: Lewa Conservation Education Centre
At the CEC, we had a visit from Chege, the Chief Conservation Officer at Lewa and he was happy to see the hand given by the XO’s in the teaching of conservation education. We had had students from Githongo Boys School. With the wireless ability of the XO’s, I connected the machines to the same mesh network and Ephantus, the Head of Conservation Education at Lewa asked questions through a shared chat, and students discussed the questions among themselves though the laptop’s Chat Activity and at last he gave the correct answers. The students had fun as they learned.
Friday: Leparua Primary
At Leparua, I met with teachers where we discussed the welfare of the project in the school and they promised to give full support and get involved in applying the applications in teaching.
I am looking forward towards next week!
Post by Simon Mwangangi
