Abstract:

This article describes the origin and development of the educational project AprendiendoScratch. This project was created as the natural continuation to the project LearnScratch (LearnScratch.org), addressing the needs of the Spanish speaking academic community.

The challenge to the team was the creation of series of academic resources designed to incorporate Scratch into the curriculum of Spanish speaking schools, both at the primary and secondary levels.

The team AprendiendoScratch includes faculty members of Universities in the US and the Basque Country. The academic and research areas of the team members include computer programming, digital systems, microprocessors, artificial neural networks, psychology of knowledge, elementary, primary and secondary student education, virtual reality and e-learning.

The educational project includes a set of actions and resources from which we can highlight the following: a) the creation of a web portal; b) the design and production of didactic materials, both in print and electronic formats; c) training workshops, including workshops in e-learning format; d) visits to educational centers and governmental institutions in education; e) dissemination in academic and scientific forums.

The portal AprendiendoScratch.org is open to the general public since July 2011. The portal contains a collection of eight video courses corresponding to the eight families of building blocks of Scratch. Each course is organized into a set of units or lessons (3 to 7, depending on the complexity of the task.) Each lesson in turn consists of six Scratch projects. Each project has associated a video tutorial that describes in detail the goals and operation of the project. Access to these video resources is free and requires registering in the portal.

The team AprendiendoScratch has created an initial collection of eight books that include all the projects developed in the video tutorials. The main goal in the publication of the collection is to provide teachers and students a set of resources in printed format to facilitate the implementation of the projects and to complement the online resources. Each project includes the scripts of its code, a brief description of its goals and operation, and images of the completed work.

The project AprendiendoScratch also includes the design and delivery of person to person training workshops as well as virtual workshops. The first series of these workshops have been developed under a project of collaboration with OLPC (One Laptop per Child project) in Latin America. These workshops were offered to teachers, instructors and trainers of Peru, Paraguay, Mexico, Uruguay and Argentina. Also a virtual monthly workshop is being offered to Telmex in Mexico distributed over more than 20 centers across Mexico.

Also, during the academic years 2011-12 and 2012-13 the team AprendiendoScratch is helping introduce Scratch in University forums. In particular, a set of lectures have been delivered in three Masters programs of Education (in Child Education and Primary Education) in institutions of the University of the Basque Country and the University of Alicante.

The portal is a daily resource for institutions in: Spain, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Peru, US, Uruguay, Costa Rica, Venezuela, Paraguay, Chile, Ecuador, Bolivia and other countries.

The team is opening additional lines of research including coginitive models of the learning process, intelligence, creativity and language.

Keywords:

Scratch, Programming, Problem-Solving.