Using Scratch to support science education in school

Leading team:

• Prof. Mordechai (Moti) Ben-Ari

Project team:

• Dr. Ronit Ben-Bassat Levy

Brief

We investigated the use of Scratch for facilitating the learning of middle-school biology. The students participated in an extracurricular program in which they attended sessions at Weizmann institute, where they studied both Scratch and biology and then developed projects in class or at home under the supervision of both a computer science teacher and a biology teacher. We observed the activity, interviewed the students and administered attitude questionnaires. Our findings show that the projects developed by the students demonstrated a good quality of programming in Scratch, as well as satisfactory knowledge of biology. All students held high positive attitudes towards the use of Scratch and preferred to learn biology by using Scratch.

Scratch is developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab.