Day 1

These are resources provided for participants in "Scratch Camp" and Scratch programming / learning events sponsored through the Div Jr. Program in Edmond, Oklahoma.

Resources for July 16, 2012: An Introduction to Scratch

Introductions

What is Scratch?

Curriculum for Scratch Camp by Div Jr instructors is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Please direct questions about this curriculum to staff at The Div.

"Colorful Introductions" activity

Create a bowl that contains a bunch of colorful objects, like a collection of red, blue, and yellow LEGO bricks. Each color represents different categories of facts. Each person takes a handful of the objects and then shares information about him/herself based on the colors s/he selected. For the workshop, the questions could have a Scratch flavor.+ For Scratchers who are just starting

    • Red: Something you notice about the user interface

    • Blue: Your favorite character in the sprite library

    • Yellow: Something you hope to create with Scratch

+ For Scratchers with some experience

    • Red: Your favorite Scratch project

    • Blue: Explanation of a feature you’ve used in Scratch

    • Yellow: Something you would change about Scratch

(This activity is included in the Scratch Workshop Design Guide)

Goals

The creative learning spiral (from Professor Mitch Resnick) summarizes the philosophy and process we'll follow in camp this week.

This week we want you to CREATE a variety of Scratch projects you find personally interesting. These will hopefully include 4 of the Scratch project categories:

    1. stories

    2. games

    3. animations

    4. simulations

In our classroom we want to "create a culture of fearlessness, exploration, and peer collaboration." (From page 17 of Karen Brennan's "Curriculum Guide for Creative Computing with Scratch")

Demonstration activity of Logo / Scratch instruction basics.

Explore and Play

Project 1: Cat Dance Steps

    1. Start by dragging out the “move 10 steps” block from the “Motion” blocks palette to the scripting area. Every time you click on the block the cat moves a distance of 10. You can change the number to make the cat move a greater or smaller distance.

    2. From the “Sound” palette, drag out the “play drum” block. Click on the block to hear its drum sound. Drag and snap the “play drum” block below the “move“ block. When you click on this stack of two blocks, the cat will move and then play the drum sound.

    3. Copy this stack of blocks (either using the Duplicate toolbar item or by rightclicking the stack and selecting “duplicate”) and snap the copy to the alreadyplaced blocks. Change the second “move” block to -10 steps, so the cat moves backward. Every time the stack of four blocks is clicked, the cat does a little dance forward and back.

    4. Go to the “Control” blocks palette and grab the “repeat” block. Wrap the “repeat” block around the other blocks in the scripting area. Now when you click on the stack, the cat dances forward and back 10 times. o Finally, drag the “when Sprite clicked” block and snap it to the top of the stack. Click on the cat (instead of the blocks stack) to make the cat dance.

(From pages 15-16 of Karen Brennan's "Curriculum Guide for Creative Computing with Scratch")

Projects to Explore:

  1. Scratch Jokes

    1. ART Projects (from ScratchEdTeam)

    2. STORIES Projects (from ScratchEdTeam)

    3. MAZE Projects (from ScratchEdTeam)

    4. GAMES Gallery (from ScratchEdTeam)

    5. Other SAMPLE Projects (from ScratchEdTeam)

  2. Currently "Featured" Scratch Projects

The SCRATCH BLOCKS pages in the official SCRATCH WIKI are helpful for learning about new blocks. (There are more than 100 blocks in 8 different categories!)

CREATE

Project 2: Sprite Surprise

Create a project in which something surprising happens to a sprite. Try this script:

SHARE

What Scratch projects did you find today that you liked? Please save the projects you liked as FAVORITES on your profile. (Here is Dr. Fryer's Scratch profile page.) This will make it easier for you to find Scratch projects to share with others, and make it easier for your classmates to link to them!

Here are some questions we'll ask and discuss as we share our Scratch projects:

    1. How did you do that?

    2. What did you get stuck on? How did you get unstuck?

    3. What are you most proud of? Why?

    4. What might you want to do next?

(From page 18 of Karen Brennan's "Curriculum Guide for Creative Computing with Scratch")

Remember you can check out and link to your classmates' Scratch profiles at the bottom of our July 2012 Scratch Camp homepage.