Bela Andreas Bargel
Daniel Szentes
Wolfgang Roller
Scratch@MIT: Bela-Andreas Bargel
Fraunhofer Gesellschaft in Germany
 Application oriented research
 56 Institutes at
40 Locations in Germany
 13 000 Employees
 1 Billion € Budget
Josef von Fraunhofer
(Scientist, contrivance and
enterpriser
1787-1826)
presents his Spectrometer
Scratch@MIT: Bela-Andreas Bargel
Fraunhofer IITB in Karlsruhe and AST Ilmenau
Representative
Peking
Operational Costs in 2007: 18 Mio. €
Permanent employees:
182
of which scientists and eng.:
131
Additional student aides:
100
Director:
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Jürgen Beyerer
Chair of Interactive Realtime Systems
Universität Karlsruhe (TH)
Scratch@MIT: Bela-Andreas Bargel
Application center
system technology Ilmenau
System techniques
IITB Core Competences and Business Domains
Image Interpretation
Control Systems Technology
IuK management
Scratch@MIT: Bela-Andreas Bargel
How to get girls involved…
… in game programming?
Bela Andreas Bargel
Daniel Szentes
Wolfgang Roller
Scratch@MIT: Bela-Andreas Bargel
Girls’Day – Future Prospects for Girls’?
Girls’Day in Germany provides female pupils with an opportunity
to gain practical insights into the world of work, particularly in
technical and technology-related fields including computer
science and its cognate disciplines.
Scratch@MIT: Bela-Andreas Bargel
Extracurricular activities for boys and girls…
Beside Girls’Day we also provide independent workshops
for pupils (girls and boys) of ‚Schülerakademie‛ in
Karlsruhe as part of extracurricular activities in general.
Scratch@MIT: Bela-Andreas Bargel
Why looking for a way to motivate
girls to program their own computer game?
Women are still underrepresented in many technical professions
including computer science and its cognate disciplines:
 While there has been a lot of progress in coeducation during
the last centuries we still have to face numerous challenges in
equal opportunities.
 Unfortunately many girls start losing interest already and
especially during school…
 This should be addressed by the digital divide discourse.
Scratch@MIT: Bela-Andreas Bargel
Girls’Day@Fraunhofer IITB Karlsruhe
As Fraunhofer Institute for Information and Data Processing
(IITB), Karlsruhe, Germany, we offered several workshops the last
two years:

Desktop Publishing (DTP),

Computer Vision,

Robotics and furthermore

Several sessions using Squeak, Scratch and Alice.
Scratch@MIT: Bela-Andreas Bargel
Setting
 For Girls’Day we have no advance information about how
‘tech savvy’ the girls actually are.
 In our workshops two pupils (age 10-13) share one laptop.
 This allows them to help each other easily.
 Of course the pupils have to negotiate how to share the
‘limited ressource’ mouse and screen.
 Having a small group of six pupils seems to be a quite
reasonable size:


Pupils might easily have a look at the others and
the tutor still has enough time to help individually
at the beginning if necessary.
Scratch@MIT: Bela-Andreas Bargel
Some working samples - Squeak
A small clock:
Done in the last five minutes of our first workshop (two girls, 11
and 12 years old) while using Squeak for the first time.
Scratch@MIT: Bela-Andreas Bargel
Some working samples - Squeak
A small clock:
Done in the last five minutes of our first workshop (two girls, 11
and 12 years old) while using Squeak for the first time.
Their challenges:

‘painting‘ every watch hand as sole object,

finding the center of rotation at the end of the watch hand,

start ‘scripting‘ each object while thinking about ‛how fast is
time?‛.
Scratch@MIT: Bela-Andreas Bargel
Some working samples – Storytelling Alice
Ogre love story:
Adapted storytelling tutorial (St-Alice) in german about an ogre,
a pixie and the magic spells ‚Amoratus‛ and ‚Erwachikus‛...
Scratch@MIT: Bela-Andreas Bargel
Why are we using Scratch now?
Scratch@MIT: Bela-Andreas Bargel
environment
ease of access from the kids perspective
Squeak Etoys
Scratch
Alice
St-Alice
localization (L10N)
free and direct interaction
scenery
painting
animating
using predefined objects and/or scripts
storytelling
online sharing
“visual programming”(scripts, blocks,…)
Game programming using Scratch
Starting with table tennis…
While a ‘hit-test’ (‘touching’) provides basic bouncing from the
self-painted paddle itself the main hurdle was to connect to
‘outside world’ using ‘mouse-pointer’.
Scratch@MIT: Bela-Andreas Bargel
Game programming using Scratch
… may result in Breakout…
After some time one group added a block with hit-test and a
basic version of ‚Breakout*‛ was born.
* Atari
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Inc., Nolan Bushnell, 1976
Game programming using Scratch
… or ‘real’ Pong*.
With ‘highscore’ and some more dynamic bouncing effects.
* Atari
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Inc., Allan Alcorn, 1972
‘Dos‘ in general…

Prepare some ideas/scenarios by yourself to be able to
bridge the gap if your pupils get stuck with a problem and
get lost...

Having a ‘real world’ example is helpful (e.g. take a paddle
and a table tennis ball to the first session and start
bouncing: Ask the girls what’s happening)…

Stimulate the intrinsic motivation: Help pupils to answer
their questions, even ask constructive questions by yourself
if necessary without using (too much) technical terminology.
Scratch@MIT: Bela-Andreas Bargel
‘Dos‘ in general…

Painting an object normally creates very positive emotional
involvement with this object and thus is a great start.


Beside Scratch also Squeak is a great tool for this setting.
But also think of the ‚Get surprise sprite‛-button as not
every pupil might want to paint something new.

It might be hard to start from a sole ‘white paper’ (empty stage)
and thus Scratch really offers help in this case.
Scratch@MIT: Bela-Andreas Bargel
‘Dos‘ using Scratch…


Let the children create an account at the scratch.mit.eduwebsite and integrate this into your setting:

Your pupils might finish their ‘work’ for fun at home and get in
contact with other’s projects.

Scratch community might work as a ‚youtube for user-generated
programmable media‛ here – which is a great differentiation of
Scratch in comparison to other environments.
Have a look at the localization of your system: Not every
translation might completely fit with the sense of the word.
Scratch@MIT: Bela-Andreas Bargel
…and ‘don‘ts‘ in general…

Be an observer (really!) .

Force yourself not to do ‘ex-cathedra teaching’:

Let the kids find solutions by themselves.
Scratch@MIT: Bela-Andreas Bargel
…and ‘don‘ts‘ especially for girls!

Do not talk about mathematics and coordinate systems at
the beginning as it might be associated with negative
emotions.
Scratch@MIT: Bela-Andreas Bargel
…and ‘don‘ts‘ especially for girls!
Programming should always be considered from the perspective
of the pupil: If ‘high-scores’ aren’t of interest for some girls, do
not lead them into that direction:

Have a look what keeps them motivated:

Making the object as beautifully as possible:
-> painting

Having ‘something’ that follows the mouse:
-> manipulating and interaction

Or something that’s doing something on its own:
-> e.g. animation

Or tells a story:
-> storytelling with speech balloons
Scratch@MIT: Bela-Andreas Bargel
…and the last one:
Even if science is fun…
…do not talk about ‚the science of…‛:
Instead have a look what elements might be just fun :-)
Be open minded to see what your pupils will do…
…and you won’t be the ‘teacher’ for the whole time.
Scratch@MIT: Bela-Andreas Bargel
Thank you for your attention
Girls’Day 2008@IITB
Scratch@MIT: Bela-Andreas Bargel
Something to read – authoring environments
Scratch:
Storytelling Alice:

scratch.mit.edu

alice.org

‚ Scratch: A Sneak Preview. ‚
by J. Maloney, L. Burd, Y. Kafai, N. Rusk, B.
Silverman and M. Resnick

‚Lessons Learned from Designing a
Programming System to Support Middle
School Girls Creating Animated Stories‛
by Caitlin Kelleher and Randy Pausch

‚ScratchR: a platform for sharing usergenerated programmable media‛
by Monroy-Hernández
Squeak:

squeakland.org

‚Squeak Etoys Authoring & Media‛
by Alan Kay

‚Drive A Car‚
by Alan Kay
Scratch@MIT: Bela-Andreas Bargel
Croquet:

opencroquet.org

‚OpenCroquet: A Menagerie of New User
Interfaces‛
by David Smith, Andreas Raab , David
Reed and Alan Kay
Something to read – more general
 ‚A Personal Computer for Children of All Ages‚ and
 ‚Doing With Images Makes Symbols‛
by Alan Kay
 ‚All I Really Need to Know (About Creative Thinking) I Learned (By Studying
How Children Learn) in Kindergarten‛
by Mitchel Resnick
 ‚The Children's Machine: Rethinking School In The Age Of The Computer‚
by Seymour Papert
 Of course Jean Piaget,…

German readers may also have a look at Hilbert Meyer in general.
DynaBook by Alan Kay 1972
Scratch@MIT: Bela-Andreas Bargel
Contact
[email protected]

[email protected]

[email protected]

Fraunhofer Institute for Information and Data Processing
Business Division: Interoperability and Assistance Systems
Fraunhoferstraße 1, 76131 Karlsruhe, Germany
http://www.iitb.fraunhofer.de/?GD 08
Scratch@MIT: Bela-Andreas Bargel