Digital creativity is immensely important to the education and learning of modern day students, as it allows students to explore the technology filled world around us, allowing one to become competent with endless technological developments.
Technology such as ‘Scratch’ which allows students to code an animated figure to perform certain tasks is immensely useful in developing digital creativity skills and computational thinking. In a study conducted by José-Manuel, one is able to see how Scratch has effectively allowed students to develop computational concepts and computational practices, which showed a significant improvement across many subject areas including Math, Science, English and History (Sáez-López, Román-González, & Vázquez-Cano. 2016). As a result, Through the use of the application students were able to interact and create their own content relating to all curricular areas and show great advantages such as motivation and enthusiasm.
Scratch can be used across multiple subject areas and but has been heavily used within math lessons to students within Stages 2 and 3. An example of how math teachers have used Scratch to allow students to further advance, is to allow student to develop their own sprites and shapes and allowing their sprite to travel across the edges and angles of their chosen shape. As a result, students would be able demonstrate an understanding of how shapes and angles relate to one another (Jack Townend, 2015).
Although Scratch has many benefits for students motivation and enthusiasm within their classes, the process of coding is quite time consuming and requires schools to provide all students with laptops in order to effectivity gain computational skills, concepts and enhance their understanding within certain subject areas. As a result, many schools will be unable to use this form of technology and allow students to develop these skills properly.
Furthermore, the time restraints within lessons do not give teachers an effective amount of time to instruct students how to use the application and proceed for students to continue with the activity. The fine-tuning required for coding can mean that one mistake in the code and take an entire lesson for the student to fix, making it difficult for students to complete tasks and gain the content knowledge the application was meant to enhance and develop.
Reference List
Sáez-López, Román-González, & Vázquez-Cano. (2016). Visual programming languages integrated across the curriculum in elementary school: A two year case study using “Scratch” in five schools. Computers & Education, 97, 129-141.
Jack Townend. (2015) Teaching with Scratch. School Library Journal, 61.
Macquarie University 