Partner Scratch Game!

Reflect on you and your partner’s design thinking process. What was your contribution?

At first, due to some technical difficulties, we did not have as much time to talk about conflicts and what we wanted to do for our game during class. However, we were able to brainstorm a little through texting. After thinking, we both had in common that not knowing what to wear for a Halloween was a conflict we had in common. From there, we did some research on scratch dress up games which helped us with the coding. We had to plan out what costumes and scenes we would put in the game and how many costume changes she would have. We definitely had some challenges that we had to figure out on our own how to solve. But once we were able to solve them, it worked really well! Overall, it was nice to have a finished game that people could play that we made. We both evenly split the work, we split up the costumes and background so we each made those, and then we would just send each other the game back and forth after working on it by ourselves.

What did you learn from working with your partner?

Doing scratch collaboratively online was a struggle. Not being able to work with my partner in person was challenging. My partner and I struggled with sending each other the game we worked on because scratch makes it a new game so we had a lot of versions of the game! Another thing that was challenging was that schedule-wise, we had trouble working on it. I would send the game to my partner and she wouldn’t be able to work on it until night and we both went back and forth with different schedules. Something I learned about myself was that working online, I felt I wanted to finish the game all on my own in a day or two and that I wanted to work for a while and get it done. But working with a partner online is difficult because you have different schedules and such. I have no problem working collaboratively in person but working collaboratively online definitely showed me that I struggle with it.

How does this relate (or not) to your prior experience of art and art ed?

I have learned a lot about collaborative learning during my art education experience. I have learned that it is encouraged and I learned the importance of working collaboratively. I think having students working with a partner or group is good at a younger age to encourage better social skills and allows the students to feel comfortable sharing and applying ideas. What was different in this case was that we worked collaboratively online. This is new to most people and it was definitely a lot more challenging. But I think that introducing students to work together online will be good if something like a pandemic happens ever again.

How might you apply this in your classroom?

As I had mentioned before, I want to use collaborative learning in my future classroom. I feel that students working together is really important can help with several aspects of their lives. I feel that working in groups and partners throughout my education has really helped me in the long run. I had always had a problem with wanting to do all the work in groups but I have learned that working collaboratively means that everyone should work together equally.