May 18, 2010

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - Fourth- and fifth-grade students from Glen Iris and Central Park elementary schools in Birmingham will demonstrate their skills at computer programming during the 2010 University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Scratch Day Science Fair. Scratch is a computer programming language that allows users to create interactive animations, stories, games, music and art. During the UAB Scratch Science Fair, up to 12 students will demonstrate their proficiency using Scratch programming on XO laptop computers.

The event will be Saturday, May 22 from noon to 2 p.m. at Vulcan Park and Museum, 1701 Valley View Drive.

Each year in May, "Scratchers" as they are called, gather together in locations around the world to meet other "Scratchers" and to showcase projects they have created using the programming language, according to the 2010 Scratch Day website. This month, more than 100 Scratch Day events will be held in 39 countries. This is the second year that a Scratch Day event will be held in Birmingham.

The UAB Department of Sociology and Social Work and g8four, a learning design firm that promotes technology education, are sponsors for the Birmingham event. Funding for UAB Scratch Day comes from a National Science Foundation-Integrating Computing Across the Curriculum grant awarded to UAB Associate Professor of Sociology Shelia Cotten, Ph.D., the principal investigator. Through the two-year, $1 million grant, Cotten, other UAB researchers and g8four are helping Birmingham City school teachers incorporate the XO laptop computers into the math and science curriculum.

During the school year, both Glen Iris and Central Park elementary schools held Scratch programming competitions in which the finalists were selected to showcase their work in the UAB Scratch Science Fair. Each finalist had just three weeks to create a project using Scratch that was based on a science topic they studied in class.