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 French
and Spanish, move over. Students at Thomas O’Brien Academy of Science
and Technology (TOAST) are speaking a whole different language.
It’s called Scratch, and
TOAST students are so conversant in it that they recently gave a seminar
about it to teachers-in-training at The College of Saint Rose.
Scratch is a free,
kid-friendly computer programming language designed by MIT. Students
fluent in Scratch – called “scratchers” – use the language to create
their own interactive games, stories or projects.
TOAST is the first Capital
Region school to take up Scratch, according to the team of educators
leading the project there: teachers Laurie Ellis and Steve Costello, and
library media specialist Alice Florance.
The project started as an
after-school program of a dozen kids from a range of academic levels. At
the end of each session, students didn’t want to stop, so engrossed were
they in their work on projects based on what they study in school.
The TOAST team’s goal is to
make Scratch part of the regular school day, and to help other district
schools start scratching, too!
“It’s a collaborative team,
modeling collaboration for the children,” Ellis said.
Added Costello, “It doesn’t
get any better than that.”
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