In 1995 I learned that I could actually MAKE webpages that everyone in the world could see, and my life was changed forever. Just imagine – a hobby where the tools and products do not take up any space at all, indeed a hobby so portable that I told my kids, “if I ever move to assisted living, please make sure that it has Internet access!”
I was fortunate to have a professional career as a Webmaster, (the position in 1995 perhaps should have been titled “Web Maker” as one person was expected to perform all the tasks involved.) and I still enjoy making things for the Web.
I recently have been helping with an elementary school Scratch club, and have found that the possibilities for using Scratch are endless. A couple of years ago I played with creating some Scratch drawing activities that would reinforce some of the math concepts that the children were learning at the time and to illustrate that changing just a single line of code could make a startling difference in the final drawing.
When I decided to change the name of this blog from Teaching/Learning & Technology to RuthK’s Makerspace, I needed a new logo. Since some of the very best logos are simple geometric drawings, I decided to try Scratch for this task, and I have been delighted. I used the ball to draw with the pen and then return to the center at the end. I removed the backdrop and the cat sprite, saved a picture of the stage, and I had my logo.
Actually the code still has a few bugs that I need to fix, but the fact that this is a work in progress makes it even more appealing to me for use as a blog logo. I am sure my logo will change from time to time as I learn more!
