With kids in my neighborhood starting back to school online, I began to research ways they could learn coding at home. Scratch immediately sprang to mind as one practical option. It’s drag-and-drop, multi-platform, and best of all… free. BUT is it easy to use with little-to-no teacher interaction?
I’ve used Scratch before, so I’m not a complete novice; but like most software, it’s much easier to use once you know what you’re doing. First of all, I had trouble finding the tutorials. You’d think they’d be under Explore, but instead they’re under Ideas. It would be even better if they would just put a Tutorial button right on the menu bar.
The tutorials come in 3 forms: video, coding cards, and an educator guide. I personally preferred the coding cards. They require a bit of reading, but the pdf files are loaded with colorful graphics. Kids probably prefer video format, but I found them to be somewhat cryptic and a bit buggy. I had to keep pausing and replaying the video to figure out what the mouse was clicking on.
In a few days, I’ll have lost my fresh perspective and wonder what I was making a fuss about. But for the moment, I think Scratch is a great coding language for kids, but I wonder if younger learners would be able to pick it up independently at home without some initial teacher interaction.
