FETC: Scratch for High School

These are my notes from the “Scratch for High School” session at the 2016 FETC conference. I did not take very good notes because I was working in Scratch at the same time.

Presenter

• Patrick Cullinane from The Benjamin School
• Scratch web site

Pen Tool

• Pen = used to draw paths on the screen.
• One of the first lessons is to draw basic shapes like a square.

Code to draw a square in Scratch.

Creating Interactivity

• Kids have assignment to write a program with 20 questions.
• Uses variables and sending/receiving message.

Code to broadcast messages in Scratch.

Brick Breaker Game

• When key pressed as an event is slow. Use an if statement instead.

Code to move the paddle in a Block Breaker game.

Code to animate a ball in a Block Breaker game.

Code to animate a brick in a Block Breaker game.

Math Based Programs

• He showed how to make a new block, which is like defining a custom method.

Code for creating a custom code block in Scratch.

Questions and Answers

• Do you teach any conventions like how to organize code blocks on screen?
  • You can zoom in and out.
  • You can right-click and select “Clean up”.
  • You can right-click on block to add a comment, which can be expanded and collapsed.
• How do kids make transition to other coding languages?
  • He has students do the same program first in Scratch, then Python, and then finally Java.

Student Examples

• He has students do a project where they calculate density by looping through 2 arrays of values.
• Student did a project where the user could move a putter to hit a ball, which moved with accurate and realistic velocity and angle.
• He showed a student project that drew fractals.
• A student made a Street Fighter game where each sprite had 100 costumes.

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