COLLABORATIVE CONSTRUCTION OF SCRATCH PROJECTS WITH 9-11 YEAR OLD STUDENTS DURING COVID-19 LOCKDOWN

When the COVID-19 pandemic caused all Italian schools to close in March 2020, four classes of an Italian primary schools were busy creating Scratch projects aiming at a final event at the end of the school year. As all teaching activities moved online, teaching time was reduced in order to maintain students’ daily computer hours to an acceptable level. In this context, the students were offered the opportunity to continue their project on a voluntary basis, giving them the possibility to regularly meet their peers and work collaboratively. Activities were reorganized to adapt them to the online environment, weekly meetings were devoted to the discussion of the ongoing activities and problem resolution, while programming was autonomously managed by the students. 81% of the students decided to actively participate, and they all had a complete project to present at the final event. The paper presents the organization of the online activities and some observations along with a short discussion on pros and cons of the online programming activities.