Grants/Approach for a Working Emerging Field Through Scratch for Secondary Students
Describe the project you are proposing as clearly as possible in just five sentences.
The proyect "Approach for a Working Emerging Field Through Scratch for Secondary Students" raises the realization of a workshop from October to November 2010, in an introductory level, where one hundred children will learn and develop knowledge and basic skills in computer applications programming, in a educational and meaningful way through the Scratch programming environment (http://www.scratch.mit.edu) at the Cultural Centre Matucana 100.
Detail the tangible project output (e.g., paper, blog post, written materials, video/film, etc.; this would be in addition to the final written report that successful grant recipients will be expected to deliver to CC at the conclusion of the project).
The project will consists of an introductory workshop of Scratch platform in one week for 10 selected students that belongs to schools fincanced by the state that are close to the Cultural Centre Matucana 100 . "Approach for a Working Emerging Field Through Scratch for Secondary Students" will be done during ten weeks (September 27 to December 3 2010) from 2:30 pm to 5:45 pm, giving the opportunity to introduce the platform Scratch to a hundred students of the city of Santiago.
The proyect “Approach for a Working Emerging Field Through Scratch for Secondary Students” will make available under Creative Commons License to the educational community who communicate in spanish the following material in digital form:
- A manual, designed in Inkscape, written in Spanish, consisting of an introduction to the interface and the Scratch programming language. The manual file in Inkscape, will be made available to the community at the site of Matucana 100 and at the site of Lame (www.m100.cl and www.lame.cl). The manual file done in Inkscape will be available for the spanish spoken educational community for future changes, corrections or
deepening.
The index of the manual is as follows:
1- Programming Language Syntax Scratch 2- How to Program an Animation 3- Interaction with Different Objects Occupying the mouse and / or Keys 4- Manipulating a database with Scratch
- All the applications scheduled for the completion of the introduction manual and those created in the workshop “Approach for a Working Emerging Field Through Scratch for Secondary Students” will be upload in the official site of Scratch under one user subscription created especially for the occasion.
In these sense it should be emphasized that applications programmed in Scratch can be downloaded anywhere in the world and reused. These is one of the main characteristics of platform Scratch, because the nuclues of the program have a translator and multilingual tool that lets you change the language of the graphical interface and doing it, will also change the language of programming codes of any application that you working inside Scratch.
Describe the community you are targeting. How would the project benefit the community?
The workshops will be made to 100 selected students from 14 to 15 years that belonging to public schools of zones near by Matucana 100 Cultural Centre: Santiago Centro, Quinta Normal and Estacion Central. The introductory workshop will last one week and will be held for ten weeks in Matucana 100 Cultural Centre. Students in these zones of the city of Santiago belongs to middle and lower classes. This group has a low level learning, according to the latest SIMCE by the Government of Chile (http://www.simce.cl/mapas/?geocode=13).
The project “Approach for a Working Emerging Field Through Scratch for Secondary Students” will help to create twenty-first century skills, learn and reinforce mathematical concepts and logical, while deepening and understand the application design. The workshop will help them think creatively, to analyze and systematically to use technology collaborate smoothly and effectively, thus giving them new ways of working, collaborating and communicating that will benefit them professionally in a medium-term future, when choosing a technical or university career.br />
The relationship with the community is very close, for years I have taught courses at the same socioeconomic group, the only difference is that I have had to share my knowledge to a older generation (Andres Bello University School of Arts and Technological Institute of Chile, Career Design).
I have conducted training workshops in animation using Flash, image manipulation with Photoshop, video editing with Premiere and programming, covering ActionScript, Processing and Arduino. This experience has allowed me to be an observer and facilitator of development and changes occurs with the educational digital platforms in pass ten years.
On parallel, I am a researcher in the area of art labeled by some as New Media. In this area I have participated in publications such as aminima:: (http://aminima.net) and ISEA (http://www.isea-web.org/,) and done exhibitions talks and workshops in Chile and in other countries. The last paricipaition I had being was called The Future of the Lab, organizated by Baltan Lab (www.baltanlaboratories.org/?p=1420). I have, therefore, a profile of artist as researcher in this area. For more background (www.autopoietica.net)
Parallel to this expirience, I conducted workshops for children, teaching computer graphics in Photoshop and programming in Scratch also. I was the first to conduct workshops Scratch at a public school in Chile, and in two opportunities to participate in Scratch Day. I had show Scratch to Open Community seminars in 2009 at the Technological University of Chile.
Currently I’m working ad honorem in the Cutural Center funded by the state, called Matucana 100 (www.m100.cl) to set up a Media Lab. We have assigned, with a group of people, a space in there called Residence. In these sense we dont have the equipment to do the Workshop but we have the space and the comuncational plataform of Matucana 100 Cultural Centre to do activities. One of them will be “Approach for a Working Emerging Field Through Scratch for Secondary Students”.
How will you measure and evaluate your project’s impact - on your main participants? Other contributors? On the larger community?
The impact of the project, “Approach for a Working Emerging Field Through Scratch for Secondary Students” will is measured through a questionnaire to examine both teacher performance and matter learned.
The subject is taught previously checked against plans and programs of the Chilean Ministry of Education, and on that basis and the information obtained from other web sites will be developed an introductory manual to the Scratch programming platform. The main purpose of this evaluation is to ensure the constant improvement of the quality of education and excellence in teacher education.
Another impact will be that we will have computers for doing other workshops using free software in the future. In sustitution of propetary software. Its very important to dimension both sides of the digital culture producitvity, one centralize by propetary softwares and descentralize in the sense of FLOSS (free/libre and open source software).
How many participants do you expect to be involved in your project? How will you seek and sustain their involvement?
It aims to show the programming platform Scratch to a hundred school students from lower middle social stratum, that belongs to three communes of Santiago (Santiago Centro, Estacion Central, Quinta Normal). To sustain a lasting relationship with the project participants we will establish a relational system where they will exists:
- Relations with the Audience We will have close and friendship relation with the people who will particiapte in the workshop. In these sense we will work in the oficial blog of Scratch updating it and promoting it using an email data base. Also the workshops will be analyze in the sense of quiality using a form done in PHP. All the information will be store ina a server for future proyections.
- Relations with Public Organizations There is an important role played by the public sector in the provision of activities for educational propose, both in governance and private management. In this regard, we will made efforts to create a strong educational organization dedicated specifically to the area of education and technology. For that we will establish relations with public organization dedicated to the educational sector like Free Software Chile organization or Educa Chile. In addition we will establish linkages with the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Economy, CORFO and mines companies that support these initiatives.
Although formal relations with educational institutions should belong to these group. It is believed that the space of a collaborative knowledge (where the workshop will take place), is interesting them. In these sense there are a lot of primary and secondary educational institutions around the Matucana 100 Cultural Centre:
http://www.municipalidaddesantiago.cl/educacion/establecimientos.php http://matriculascolegios.cl/mc06/sub01/quintanormal.htm http://www.matriculascolegios.cl/mc06/sub01/estacioncentral.htm
In these point we have consider also, a large number of universities where are close to the Cultural Centre Matucana 100. These universities could be in a near future related directly or indirectly to the project “Approach for a Working Emerging Field Through Scratch for Secondary Students” or to other activities we are working. Some of the universisties that are close to Matucana 100 are: Universidad de Santiago, Universidad Bolivariana, Universidad Nacional Andrés Bello, Universidad Diego Portales. They have several schools such as Engineering, Design, Science, Art, Primary and Secondary Education. These relation will permit to see scope for continous exchange of experiences among the universities student, academics, the members of the media lab and why not with the students that will go to the workshops “Approach for a Working Emerging Field Through Scratch for Secondary Students”.
Describe how your project will benefit Creative Commons' mission to increase the amount of creativity (cultural, educational, and scientific content) in "the commons".
For the project “Approach for a Working Emerging Field Through Scratch for Secondary Students” will have netbooks bought, that will have operating system Ubuntu. Each computer will have install the Scratch programming platform.
If the proyect have a good impact we will install other open source plataforms (Processing, Pure Data, Arduino, Blender),and teach them also. In parallel all the activities (video and audio editing, writing, or programming applications) done in the computers will be licensed Creative Commons and the be online for the community.
Describe what technologies and tools your project will use. What kinds of technical skills and expertise do you bring to the project? What are your technical needs?
For the proyect "Approach for a Working Emerging Field Through Scratch for Secondary Students" we will use ten tochscrenn netbooks with Ubuntu Operating System. In each of them wi will install Scratch. For the workshops we will use also a datashow projector.
I have a great technical expirience teaching video editing, animation, digital photograph. Besides I have programm in Actionscript, Processing, Mobile Processing, Flex, and have basic knowledge of PHP. I have a long expirience researching the are of the new medias, the hybrid of art and technology.
What challenges do you expect to face, and how do you plan to overcome them?
The challenge is to make a diagnostic concerning to the interest of Scratch in the public school. If the interest is higher we could justify a larger scale project that is nationwide teaching Scratch. In this sense, and if the project is well evaluated, will be a precedent for submission through the Cultural Centre Matucana 100 to Chilean Ministry of Education to work in a program for Primary and Secondary level using Scratch platform or other tools.
How do you plan to sustain your project after the Creative Commons funding has ended? Detail specific plans. How do you plan to raise revenue to continue your efforts in the future?
We will search for private and state funding. The Cultural Centre Matucana 100 have great archive of contacts that could finance a educational proyect like these. Also we will research for other international fundings to make possible these project and other projects using Creative Commons licenses.
How can this project be scalable, or have a scalable impact?
It is thought that in future the project should be replicated not only in the laboratory, but at the metropolitan level and finally at the regional level. The challenge was how to introduce the teaching of the Scratch software platform within the schools in Chile.
What resources and support do you expect Creative Commons to provide to your project to ensure its success (if any)?
A ecnomical one. The resources are:
- Purchase of 10 computers ASUS. Eee PC T91, Intel® Atom Z520, 1Gb DDR2, 32Gb, Wlan 802.11b/g/n, USB2.0, 8.9" TFT LED, In Chile, these have a value of $ 389,000 Chilean pesos. / USD 709.924
Distributor: Bip Computers http://www.bip.cl/ecommerce/index.php?modulo=busca&id_producto=7195
SubTotal: $ 3,890,000 Chilean pesos. SubTotal: USD 7099,24
- Day cost of the workshop $20.000. During 10 weeks from Septembet to December SubTotal: $ 1,000,000 Chilean pesos. SubTotal: USD 1,824.984
- 30 hours of preparing material. Value per hour $ 4,000 Chilean pesos. SubTotal: $ 150,000 Chilean pesos. SubTotal: USD 219.760
- Data Show Projector Proyector ViewSonic PJD5112/DLP (VS12618) Distributor: Almacenes Paris. http://www.paris.cl/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/productLP_10001_40000000577_-5_11810901_18877035_151380105_18877035,11810901__listProd
SubTotal $299.990 Chilean pesos. SubTotal: 549.482 USD
Total: $ 5.499.900 Chilean pesos. Total: USD 9,693.466
Describe how your organization currently communicates with its community members and network partners. (100 words)
Matucana 100 Cultural Center, where the media lab located, has a flow of 300,000 to 450,000 people annually. (www.m100.cl/transparencia_voluntaria_observatorio_publico.php)
The Cutural Centre Matucana 100 has an area of Education, which is particularly active in organizing guided tours for students, aged between 15-18 years, belonging to the municipalities that are adjacent to the Cultural Center.
In parallel the Cultural Centre organizes exhibitions of film, video, art and rides and theater performances. Beside its linked to other cultural centers state, and it is constantly linked with academics, artists and actors as many of them are selected to carry out activities in Matucana 100.
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