Scratch Jr activity- Can I make my characters run a race?
Reflection:
This would be a good Scratch Jr activity to use with Key stage 1 children. I have not yet used Scratch Jr in practice. I will be planning to incorporate it in my future teaching. The benefits of this application for teaching computing would be: It allows for the child to make their abstract thought processes visible on the screen. Children can easily manipulate and control characters. Also, because they are displayed visually on a screen, the teacher can see what and how a child is thinking. ScratchJr was designed so that this visualisation is very clear; the code blocks appear as coloured boxes that snap together so that programs can be built (rather than using typed in commands, functions and statements). The blocks are visual and can be moved around and placed with the mouse or finger (Kazakoff, E.R, & Bers, M.U. 2013).