Nebo Elementary Students Present twice at the National Educational Computing Conference in Atlanta during June 2007




Students from the Nebo Elementary School Department of Fine Arts in Paulding County, Georgia presented at two sessions at the National Educational Computing Conference (NECC) on June 24th through the 27th, 2007.  

Using laptop computers, an LCD projector, posters, and the Scratch Program, the Shelby Rhodes, Hailey Terry, Katie Amritt, and Craig Haley built a display to demonstrate and share their projects during the “Georgia Success Stories” poster session on Monday, June 25th.

Tori Mills and Tony Anderson contributed their programming and storytelling skills to this project.

Ms. Susan Thompson from Massapequa, NY invited the Nebo students back on Wednesday, June 27th to share at another poster session: “Project Based Learning.”


During both sessions, the Nebo students demonstrated their 2 dimensional computer programs they wrote using the Scratch Programming platform.  Students also demonstrated how they created these games and what programming concepts they employed to tell the game story.

Not only did the students share their games, they also taught conference participants from all over the United States how to do basic programming using Scratch.  The students taught adults how to create objects in the program, write procedures for these objects to have them move and interact.  For many of the conference participants, this was their first look at the Scratch Program as a teaching and programming tool.  The Nebo students’ knowledge and energy inspired other teachers, students, and administrators to research Scratch and develop ways to use computer programming as a tool to teach the Georgia Performance Standards.

Summary of the Nebo Scratch Project:

Students began by writing a narrative for their game that introduced the characters, setting, problem, and solution.    After creating their game and testing it. The students wrote a persuasive advertisement and created web pages to convince other students to play their game.  
Through the creation of these games on Scratch, the students demonstrated how to translate elements of story, character, setting, and action into mathematical expressions and programming logic. 

This project is aligned with the following Georgia Performance Standards:

•    ELA5W3: The student uses research and technology to support writing.
•    ELA5W2: The student demonstrates competence in a variety of genres.
•    M5P1: Students will solve problems (using appropriate technology).
•    M5P3: Students will communicate mathematically.
•    M5P4: Students will make connections among mathematical ideas and to other disciplines.
•    M5P5: Students will represent mathematics in multiple ways.

Summary and Description of Scratch:

Scratch is a free tile based programming language created by MIT to teach programming concepts.  A quote from the Scratch Website:  

Scratch is a new programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art -- and share your creations on the web.  

Scratch is designed to enhance the technological fluency of young people, helping them learn to express themselves creatively with new technologies.

As they create Scratch projects, young people learn important mathematical and computational ideas, and they gain a deeper understanding of the process of design.  

Scratch is developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab, in partnership with a network of collaborators, with financial support from the National Science Foundation, Intel Foundation, and MIT Media Lab research consortia.

Source: (http://scratch.mit.edu/about)
 
About the Nebo Elementary School Department of Fine Arts:

The Nebo Elementary Department of Fine Arts seeks to equip students with the tools of music, movement, and technology understanding so students will think artistically, express themselves, and share in the artistic expressions of others.

The Nebo Elementary School Department of Fine Arts provides classroom music for students in grades Kindergarten through 5th grade.  In addition, the Fine Arts program provides after school activities in Drama, Dance, Chorus, Violin, and Technology.

We strive to teach students to not simply consume media, rather, to create and share media with the world around them.

More information about the Nebo Elementary Department of Fine Arts can be found at: www.nebomusic.net

or email Mr. Michaud at cmichaud@paulding.k12.ga.us

Mr. Michaud would like to thank the Administration and Teachers from Nebo Elementary School and Paulding County Public Schools for their support of this project.  Thanks also to Ms. Jill Hobson for organizing the Georgia Success stories booth. In addition, Mr. Michaud also thanks the parents of the student participants for helping with providing additional equipment and setting up the presentation booths.