The proposal for the event, submitted in response to an invitation from Dr. Inés Kereki, Professor of Programming at the Faculty, was accepted by the Scratch Day organizing committee. It emerged as a practical initiative following trials conducted in programming courses, the results and conclusions of which were presented last year at the Scratch@MIT conference in Boston and FIE2008.
The activity consisted of an open workshop for students, featuring hands-on computer exercises, and a discussion and Scratch training session for teachers that included an introduction to the tool, presentations by teachers, and a subsequent discussion of ideas.
The following presentations were given at the dissemination meeting for teachers:
- "The inner child... can teachers enjoy playing?" Classroom experiences, strategies for developing exercises, and the teacher-author scenario. Presentation of the "Secret SCRATCH Hub" website, published in the Ministry of Education and Culture’s Educational Resource Bank. The activity was led by Assistant Professor Daniel Gastelú, a secondary school teacher (Astronomy and Computer Science).
- “Scratch in the Computer Science High School Program – UTU – Florida, Montevideo” Classroom experiences, featuring applications created in Scratch by students and their evaluation. Additionally, other useful examples for secondary education courses were analyzed. Led by Prof. Alejandro Adorian, a Computer Science High School teacher at UTU and a Programming instructor at ORT University.
- "Scratch in the First Programming Course." Programming is a complex intellectual activity. The use of Scratch aims to facilitate an initial introduction to programming and motivate students in Programming I courses at the Faculty of Engineering (university and technical levels). The presentation detailed the courses, the experimentation, and the results obtained. Presented by Dr. Inés Kereki, Professor of Programming.