Hack yor window with Scratch - Family creative learning

Now that, because of the confinement due to the COVID19, we look at the world from the window, in Inventors4Change we propose a family creative learning activity with Scratch, that can be done during the confinements.

Just take a picture of a window at home, and using Scratch, turn it into a computer game, or into an animated story, an art project, etc. The possibilities are endless, you just have to imagine.

Visit this website for tips and instructions, and if you participate don't forget to put your project in this Scratch studio.

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Creative, critical and collaborative learning activities from India

As the children's blog grows, and they begin researching this year's theme, a part of the Inventors4Change team has moved temporarily to India to conduct teacher training activities and workshops with children in the participating schools.

Teacher training is mainly focused on Scratch and collaborative digital storytelling. Workshops with children have also addressed these same topics, but also include low-cost robotics, computational tinkering, unplugged computer science and other activities.

The videoconferences between Catalonia, India and Colombia will start very soon, and then the children will carry out the online collaborative work to co-create digital stories on the theme "learning with and from old people".

As you can see, the project is going full steam ahead! :)

PS: photos by Jordifreix.

 

 

 

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Sharing examples of collaborative work

We are about to start a new school year in Inventors4Change, with participating schools from Spain, India and Colombia. We will tell you the news soon, but before that we want to share a couple of videos that show examples of collaborative digital stories designed and developed by children from Spain and India during the last academic year. The theme was Access to Education. The first story was led by children of Institut de Gurb, and the second by children of Escola Carme Auguet.

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Field work in India 2017

Our Inventors4Change team has finished their stay in India. The objective was to conduct workshops with children and teachers of the schools participating in the project, in this way they know the tools and methodologies that we will use during the collaborative work India-Spain.

For five weeks we have performed workshops and trainings in different schools, and we have also visited other learning centers and projects that stand out for their pedagogical approach or for their educational innovations. For us, every trip is also an opportunity to learn.

In particular, this year during our stay, we worked intensively with the four schools of the Parikrma Foundation, we carried out some activities at Shanti Bhavan School and The Valley School, and we visited the Project DEFY.

 

Our actions included activities such as workshops and trainings on Scratch, LEGO tinkering, cardboard automatas, underwater robotics, drones, Arduino, and other creative learning experiences where we tried to merge technology, art and science. We also conducted videoconferences between Parikrma Jayanagar School and Carme Auguet School, and between Parikrma Nandini Layout School and Institut de Gurb.

Now it's time to create mixed virtual teams with children from both countries, and to start the online collaborative work. Children will use Scratch to create digital stories about this year's topic: the access to education.

 

 

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Access to Education

This academic year 2016-17, kids from participating schools in India and Spain will write and share articles and opinions on the topic under discussion this year: Access to Education. The following weeks they will post their contributions (articles and video-presentations) on their Kidsblog. 

In this edition participating schools are: Parikrma Jayanagar (India), Parikrma Nandini Layout (India), Institut de Gurb (Spain) and Escola Carme Auguet (Spain).

After the research/presentations stage, students will participate in virtual cross-cultural exchanges and they will collaborate to create digital stories about Access to Education with Scratch .

Stay tuned! 

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Final digital stories, Inventors4Change 2015-16

During the 2015-16 academic year, children from participating schools in India and Spain have been investigating the refugee crisis. First they used a blog to express their views and findings. Then the teams were presented to each other through videos, and some videoconferences between India and Spain were held. Finally the children used Scratch to invent and create digital stories and animations on the refugee crisis. In these stories, backgrounds were designed by children in India, and the characters were designed by children in Spain. Then they remixed the projects and coded the animations. 

In this post we share a video of one of those awesome stories. It was mostly created by kids at Institut de Gurb. You can see the rest of the final stories here (the 8 projects in the first two rows are the final stories).

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Characters and backgrounds come together

Indian teams have been working very hard on their backgrounds. Projects of the Catalan teams have already been reinvented, and now their characters have backgrounds where the animated stories will be developed.

All projects are being shared in the Scratch gallery for Inventors4Change: http://scratch.mit.edu/studios/278075/

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Designing characters for their interactive stories about gender equality

After being introduced to the issue of Gender Equality, the participating children in Catalonia are already designing characters for the interactive stories they will create with Scratch. After that, their counterparts in India will create the backgrounds.

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Back on track! Video presentations

We have restarted the project a few weeks ago, now with two new schools: Parikrma Centre for Learning in Jayanagar (Bangalore, India) and Institut de Gurb (Catalonia).

During the first days teams in Catalonia and India were presented to each other through photos and videos. This year's topic is Gender Equality, and children are already starting to create characters for their animations using Scratch.

Here you can watch a video recorded at Escola Veïnat, and below there is a list with some more videos already uploaded.

Institut de Gurb:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AP7Ik26XhoA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lc3YBxzLSxM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjLxvvq18OQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeZBIrmPGu4 

Escola Veïnat:
http://youtu.be/14iI3waxirQ
http://youtu.be/Lucle-1KS1E
http://youtu.be/9Lu9HHMpD3s
http://youtu.be/4V-H_Gyj9uk

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Presenting Inventors4change at #JPE14

Last Saturday we presented our project at the VI Jornada Catalana de l'Ensenyament de la Programació a Primària i a l'ESO (#JEP14). This conference is held annually at Citilab in Cornellà (Barcelona), where primary and secondary teachers interested in introducing robotics and programming in schools meet and present their innovative projects.

We presented a brief summary of our pilot project with four schools, and showed some of our first results. Next presentations at Girona Talent and Scratch@MIT 2014.

 

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Sharing our results at the upcoming Scratch Conference 2014 at MIT Media Lab

We are happy to announce that we will be in Cambridge next August presenting our project at the Scratch@MIT Conference 2014, a playful gathering of educators, researchers, developers, and other members of the worldwide Scratch community.

We will give an ignite talk presenting the results of our pilot project and explaining how we will open the initiative to other schools and organizations. 

Wondering what is the Scratch@MIT Conference? Take a look at this overview from the Scratch@MIT 2010 conference:

  Scratch@MIT 2010: Conference Highlights from Karen Brennan on Vimeo.

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Pilot project is over. But that's not the end of the story :)

After some busy weeks of virtual exchanges and collaborative inventions, we are glad to announce that the pilot project has finished. We have so many things to share with you, and we will do it during next weeks.

Today we want to share one of the already finished Scratch projects. In this case it's a story about children's rights made by a group of children from India, with the help of children from Catalonia. 

If you can not see the project try it here.

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An example of children's collaborative work. India-Catalonia

Children from Veïnat school and Carme Auguet school have already started creating Scratch scripts to program their stories about children's rights. They have been adding new characters, designing the stories, creating dialogues, and making animations.

Below you can see and example of an animation. The character was created by children of Parikrma School (Bangalore, India), the background by children of Veïnat School (Salt, Catalonia), and now children of Veïnat created an animation by adding a new costume to the character. It's just the beginning of the story, but you can already see their impressive collaborative work! The project is made on Scratch. Clicking the green flag runs the project.

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Children have already started to create stories about children's rights

After the Christmas holidays our children started to create stories about children's rights with the characters and backgrounds they already had designed. Here below you can see an example of a conversation held between children from schools Carme Auguet and Veïnat. After inventing the story collaboratively, and after reaching a consensus, children will begin to program it. Both the conversation and the programming are made with Scratch.

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Backgrounds for each character

The children of Veïnat and Carme Auguet schools have been very busy designing backgrounds for each of the characters drawn in India. The results are impressive. Visit our project gallery to see all their works. In addition to designing the background, children also wrote in English the reasons that led them to choose those designs. In a future stage children in India and Catalonia will discuss and decide what happens in the story, game or animation they are creating.

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Meet the characters!

During last week the teams in India and some children in Catalonia started drawing the characters (some of them are already uploaded in our Scratch gallery). Now the rest of the children are modifying the projects of their peers and adding backgrounds. Both characters and backgrounds are related to the common topic for all: children's rights. At the same time they are also exchanging comments and notes through the Scratch website. Their works are really amazing!

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Inventing stories about Children's Rights

Some of the teams in Catalonia and India are starting to use Scratch to invent stories about Children's Rights. Teachers from both countries introduced the topic with this nice presentation from UNICEF, and now children are drawing the characters for their stories. Next week the rest of the teams will modify the projects of their peers and add some backgrounds. The mixed teams India-Catalonia are working asynchronously and communicating among them through the Scratch platform. During next weeks we will share their projects with you.

The following pictures were taken yesterday at Carme Auguet School in Girona.

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