Black History Month Guessing Game in Scratch

Dr. Carter G. Woodson, founder of Black History Month
Dr. Carter G. Woodson, founder of Black History Month

The programmers at MIT’s Lifelong Learning Lab who created the Scratch programming language for novice programmers have come up with new “ask” and “answer” blocks. I decided to try them out by creating a guessing game about Black History Month.

I am thinking of creating some additional games using Carter G. Woodson to introduce other historical figures. Feedback is welcome.

Here are my project notes from the Scratch website:
Carter G. Woodson (1875-1950) was a son of slaves who became the second African American to earn a Ph.D. in History from Harvard University. At that time, history books did not include contributions made by Africans and people of African descent. To fix this problem, Woodson founded the organization known as the Association for the Study of African American Life and History in 1915. He began publishing books, magazines and journals about black history.

In February, 1926, Woodson started Negro History Week to encourage schools to teach students about this neglected subject. He chose February because of the birthdays of two men who played key roles in ending slavery in the United States: Abraham Lincoln (February 12) and Frederick Douglass (February 14). In 1975, the United States Congress decided that the entire month of February would be known as Black History Month.

Learn more about this project

Scratch as a Tool for Teaching Computational Journalism

Scratch in the Interactive Journalism Institute for Middle Schoolers

Scratch is a syntax-free programming  language  created at the Lifelong Learning Lab at MIT to entice novice programmers by making it relatively easy to create annimations, interactive stories and games.  Educators around the world are using Scratch to engage students from elementary school through college.

Our interactive journalism instittute for middle schoolers (funded by the National Science Foundation — grant CNS-0739713) has used Scratch as an essential element in both our instruction and in student work. As part of the preparation for the 2008 summer institute, I created short lessons in Scratch about specific journalism-related topics, including “news sense,” interviewing, and photo journalism. I think the photojournalism lesson is the most technically realized interactive lesson I did last year. Click on the image below to try it out.
Scratch Project

Our undergraduate researchers, who are more advanced “Scratchers” than I,  also created sample lessons, games and templates for stories and infographics.

This year, our PI Ursula Wolz and undergraduate research assistant Brett Taylor, developed a rubric for assessing the computational sophistication of scratch programs. Brett and another research assistant, Chris Hallberg, also created sample scratch lessons to teach specific skills, such as the broadcast command. I look forward to being able to share that information as soon as the team is finished analyzing the data generated from the use of the rubric.

In the meantime, here are some samples of interesting Scratch animations, games and infographics created by our middle schoolers can be viewed at our online magazine website, N.EW.S. (New Ewing Web Stories)