Game Design, Scratch and Learning

Scratch is a extremely simplified method of contracting games using "building block" style programming. It's easy to learn, and allows young students to learn from trial and error. In the 21st century, it is very important the students be given all the tools possible to learn and expand their technological capabilities. Scratch gives students the opportunity to solve problems through a desire to create. "The ability to program interactive input provides students direct experience with sensing, feedback, and other fundamental systems concepts."(21st century learning skills)

ISTE-NETS-T Standard 1a

Promote, support, and model creative and innovative thinking and inventiveness.

Scratch is very useful in supporting this ISTE-NETS-T Standard. Students are able to work on their own in oder to create a project, and then they can collaborate to further their understanding of the topic. The programming is designed to provoke new ideas from simply exploring all the options. If a students discovers that they can make a character walk using scratch, then it won't be long until that student tries to make the character jump. This kind of thinking builds up until even more complex ideas form. 

After exploring the scratch homepage, I was able to find a really cool project dealing with the periodic table. Here is a link to it! 

SC.O.C.1.5

draw conclusions from a variety of data sources to analyze and interpret systems and models (e.g., use graphs and equations to measure and apply variables such as rate and scale, evaluate changes in trends and cycles, or predict the influence of external variances such as potential sources of error, or interpret maps).

The above is a CSO for chemistry. I believe Scratch could be used to help students understand the content listed in the CSO. Scratch could easily be used as a data source to analyzed, and could be a fun way for students to express results from an experiment. 

I played around with Scratch for a little while, but my project is kinda lame. Here is a link to my project though. It will give you some idea of the basics of Scratch, but don't stop at my attempt. Look around the website, and see all the awesome projects people have created.