Light Drop-in Traffic on a Friday

[Alicia Anderson]

I set up an informal drop-in Scratch workshop in the Children's area here at Brookdale last Friday. Unfortunately, Fridays are one of our quietest times, and traffic was light.

All but one of the 4 kids who stopped in were pressed for time, so there wasn't a lot of time to let them poke around and explore. I showed them how to make or import a sprite, how to add costume changes, and a few rudimentary blocks for costume change and movement. Here's the only project I was able to capture:
http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/chala/939136

I liked the placement in the Kids area-- it has higher visibility than the Teen tables, plus the grade school kids are
easier to rope into trying something new.

I chose this time for a workshop because we happened to have plenty of staff that day. Unfortunately, our kid/teen traffic patterns on weekdays have lately shifted to later in the afternoon into early evening, and that's just when we either have staff changes, dinner breaks, and/or not enough staff to support a program, even an informal one. Weekend staffing is also fairly minimal. Having the most people when we need them the least is a staffing issue way beyond my little Scratch programs, so I'll have to explore solutions within the system as it is.

[Jen]

did you bring out a laptop or use a regular workstation? I wonder if we should try and do some kind of tabletop sign that points out we have scratch on all our public access computers?