Scratch

Global Graphical Programming Tools for Children (language)

What is Scratch?

Scratch is a graphical programming tool released by MIT's "lifelong Kindergarten team" in 2007, which is mainly open to young people around the world, and is the most well-known of the graphical programming tools, all of whom can create their own programs in software. It has been continuously updated, with the latest version being 3.0 as of early 2024. It is programmed by dragging and dropping building blocks, which can enable children or adult programming beginners to learn basic programming concepts. There are schools all over the world that use this software to teach classes and hold programming competitions. By learning Scratch, I can expand the depth of Chinese, mathematics and foreign language teaching.

What can you do with Scratch?

A quote from the website:

"With Scratch, you can write your own interactive media, like stories, games, animations, and then you can share your ideas with the world. Scratch helps young people be more creative, logical, and collaborative. These are essential skills to live in the 21st century." For parents: Scratch is a programming language and an online community where kids can interact with people around the world with interactive media such as stories, games, and animations. While learning Scratch, they also indirectly develop the ability to reason logically, think creatively, and work together.

For teachers: Students can use Scratch to write their own programs, such as interactive stories, animations and games. In the process, they learn to think creatively, analyze systematically, and work together to get things done, all basic skills needed in modern society.

Why learn Scratch programming?

Programming has been incorporated into advanced subjects and scratch is a very suitable programming tool for beginners

In 2017, the Pilot Plan for Deepening the comprehensive reform of the College Examination and Enrollment System in Zhejiang Province clearly stipulates that information technology disciplines (including programming) are clearly included in the compulsory subjects of high school students.

The mode of Zhejiang college entrance examination is "language, number and English + three optional exams", information technology is one of them, each accounted for 50 points. At the same time, in Beijing and Shandong, it is determined to incorporate the basis of programming into the content system of information technology curriculum and college entrance examination, and programming will also become a trend for children to learn.

Improve children's academic performance

According to the research of foreign authoritative institutions, programming has improved the overall academic performance of children by 30%. Programming enables children to transform from game users into game developers, using data to understand, analyze and solve problems. The whole process for children to exercise a lot of the formation of thinking patterns, work perspective, greatly help.

In the primary school stage, the homework burden is not too heavy, and the thinking is fast, which is the best period for children to learn programming and exercise their thinking. Programming is of great help to the improvement of other disciplines, including mathematics, physics, in the process of improving children's logical thinking ability, learning ability, attention, etc., which is especially helpful for the construction of thinking in other disciplines and improve children's comprehensive subject ability.

Learning programming is learning programming thinking The most important thing to learn programming is to learn programming thinking, and programming thinking teaches children the ability to solve problems.

No matter how complex the problem is, it can be broken down into a series of small problems that can be easily solved, and each small problem can be examined and thought about separately. Then, focus on several important nodes to form a solution; Finally design the steps and perform step by step problem solving.

Google classifies programming thinking into four broad categories: problem solving, pattern recognition, abstract thinking, and algorithm design. Programming thinking ability and problem solving ability are closely related, children who start to contact thinking ability training from an early age, thinking carefully, rich language expression, creativity, whether in school or the workplace are more likely to succeed.

Kids no longer addicted to games

Most parents will think that programming will make children too early to contact the computer and become obsessed with computer games, in fact, on the contrary, programming tells children how the game is developed, and various characters, scenes, properties, etc. in the game will be their most "original" appearance in front of the children. Children's ideological pattern has improved, understand how programmers develop games, so that children stand in a higher perspective to look at online games, to avoid addiction to games.

Kids grow through programming

In the course of learning, there will be a lot of fun and interesting projects, which can seize the child's interest, and the child will involuntarily concentrate on it. In this process, it can effectively improve the children's attention, concentration, self-confidence, reasoning and other aspects of the ability, and constantly break the various problems faced.

In the tech world, programming has long been considered a "third language" after spoken and written language. The fun of programming will let children find things they really like, learn with interest, children are happy, and the harvest will be greater.

Programming will let children develop the habit of patience, care, and improve concentration, and the process of checking mistakes over and over is the best tempering character. Programming requires children to discover and solve problems themselves, which will make children more independent, establish rational understanding and thinking about things, and cultivate a sense of responsibility. Programming will not let children out of human interaction, but open up a new way of socializing, through programming will also gain like-minded friends for children.