iRLO Reaction

Scratch. How I despised you this week. I was really scared about this assignment.  When I first sat down at my apartment to explore Scratch I was thinking, "oh this can't be too bad." However, after I installed the Scratch software onto my mac and uploaded I got a little nervous.  I was looking through all the different material and was thinking, "how is it possible that I can make a game out of this?" I freaked for a while, but after many (many) hours of playing around with the site and experimenting my ideas I started to relax a little.  Once I started the assignment and was connecting all the different materials it started becoming more clear and easy to me. Although after reviewing my lesson and seeing how simple it looks I am amazed at why it was so hard in the beginning.  I put a lot of effort into this assignment.  I could not figure out how to import other images, so I had to stick with the ones given however. I put a lot of time into this assignment by doing trial and error and figuring out the tricks of Scratch.  It's definitely not something you can sit down and finish in a couple hours.  I played around with it and experimented for many hours. By designing this iRLO I feel I would be able to make future games and activities that could really benefit my students. Yes, I could just take the easy route and find a game online, but what Scratch offers is you creating all the rules and content you want addressed in that activity.  You can really make it your own! I think I would use Scratch for simple lesson and content, but if it was heavy material I think it would be very challenging and take a lot of time.  I think I learned a lot from this assignment because I was really afraid and was thinking there was no way I could do this, and I did! I was proud of myself. It was a great experience.