Phase one of the Scratch animation activities saw us as students learn how to engage with and use the program in an effective manner. During this phase, we were asked to deliver simple commands and simple command sequences that allowed us to understand the basic fundamentals of Scratch animation. An example of this is grouping command sequences together so that the cat ‘Sprite’ moves around on the animation page. As the tutorials increase, we learnt how to draw regular polygons, which seemed extremely challenging at first, however once you had an understanding of the commands; it was quite an enjoyable experience attempting to draw different shaped polygons. This is achieved by altering the number of steps and degrees that ‘Sprite’ moves. The tutorials increased in their challenge; however the steps taken through practice ensure that you can succeed. This first phase of learning really increased my basic understanding of Scratch animation and opened my eyes to how advanced this program can be, and how important programs like this are to the technologies curriculum. In the draft paper of the Australian Curriculum: Technologies paper, the digital technologies processes and production- create digital solutions elaboration states that, “...Students will develop increasingly sophisticated skills in digital technologies processes and production through applying computational thinking to create digital information products, systems or software instructions to address digital problems” (ACARA, 2012). Scratch animation would be a fantastic online programming system to upper primary school students to learn how to begin to engage with computer programming.

The third, more advanced phase that we as students undertook was the task of creating a ping-pong game. I personally found this task extremely challenging and needed the assistance of other students in order to complete. However, working together to complete the task by exploring various programming functions allowed me to achieve a successful ping-pong game upon completion. The task was originally designed for school students, who obviously have had previous experience in computer programming. Similar to the previous phase’s activity, this scratch animation would be a fantastic design brief activity that students could complete either by themselves or in small groups. The task has a multitude of challenges involved so that students could work with others and create more challenging aspects of the ping pong game. It is important that as students who are exposed to the new technologies curriculum, we as educators give students the tools to be able to engage in critical and creative thinking. The Australian Curriculum Draft Shape paper: Technologies states that a part of being able to think and learn creatively, students will need to know “...Experimenting, drawing modelling and working with digital tools, equipment and software will assist students to build their visual and spatial thinking and to create solutions, products, services or environments” (ACARA, 2012).