Scratch Day on the Limestone Coast

Scratch is a programming language developed at the MIT Media Lab. Middle school students can design, create and share interactive stories, games, colourful animations and other projects. The Scratch website, highlighting its 'imagine, program, share' vision, currently hosts 425809 projects (total 10,791,782 scripts, 3,329,676 sprites and 65,827 contributors).

Scratch is designed to

"help young people (ages 8 and up) develop 21st century learning skills. As they create and share Scratch projects, young people learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also learning to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively".

World Scratch Day (09) was celebrated on May 16. The 'Limestone Coast Scratchers' from the south east of South Australia joined in this highly successful event.

(It) "was ... an opportunity for students who would benefit from an event that would extend them in their Higher Order Thinking skills and who had the capacity to take their learning back to their respective school and teach their peers."

This Limestone Coast regional event, with 13 teams of Year 6/7s, was hosted by Grant High School (South Australia) and was one of over 100 global events for World Scratch Day. Feedback suggests it was an outstanding success which augurs well for a successful repeat event in 2010.

Read the Scratch Day 09 Report wiki for a comprehensive picture of the aims, program (including activities links), mentor support, outcomes and feedback.

Congratulations to all!