Tag Archives: teaching

Teaching recursion with Scratch BYOB – take 2

Posted on October 8th, 2011 by Ryan

This is a follow up from a post I did about a year and a half ago on using Scratch BYOB to teach recursion. The original way of defining parameters in BYOB were a bit clunky, but it’s gotten much … Continue reading →

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Another good use for mod

Posted on May 1st, 2011 by Ryan

Got to admit that mod is one of those topics that I have trouble getting across to my students. Not the idea of what it is and how to do it, but the purpose. The classic isOdd / isEven lab … Continue reading →

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String methods in Scratch BYOB

Posted on September 4th, 2010 by Ryan

Each of the last 3 years we’ve been able to get more and more out of Scratch as it went from 1.2 to 1.4, and especially now with the BYOB 3 version from Berkeley. Adding in the ability to have … Continue reading →

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Schools trying out 4-day weeks

Posted on March 7th, 2010 by Ryan

With budgets getting tighter and tighter some schools are looking at 4-day weeks instead of 5. The fear, of course, is that students will miss out on the education they’re supposed to be getting if their week is shortened. Personally … Continue reading →

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Teaching recursion with Scratch BYOB

Posted on March 6th, 2010 by Ryan

One of the biggest limits we came across teaching with Scratch this year is the inability to write methods and use parameters.  Methods, returns, and parameters are probably the only major concept in our intro CompSci class that we can’t … Continue reading →

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Don’t “unplug” your students

Posted on February 21st, 2010 by Ryan

Came across this post from a technology teacher in Cedar Park, Texas. Much of what she talks about is the result of a conference she returned from in Austin a couple weeks ago.  A conference that I, along with a … Continue reading →

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