Scratch Thoughts (9-2)

I really enjoyed working with Scratch.  I think it is the perfect tool for introducing students to coding.  The building block format of the codes gets kids used to the idea of sending directions to a computer in chunks, the importance of clear language, and the importance of proper location and sequencing.  The fact that they can peek into other codes and use chunks of other people's codes for their own ideas allows students to make far more advanced projects, and to learn from other people's ideas.

I decided to challenge myself on this project.  I wanted to make an interactive animation using my scanograph of Trump's face.  I decided to do all of my own coding work from scratch, so I didn't use any example templates or bits of code.  I created my own sprites too, except for the balloons at the end.  One big challenge I encountered was figuring out how to get Trump's nose to grow convincingly.  I did all of my image editing within Scratch, which was it's own challenge.  I created a backdrop first with my original scanograph edited so the background color was more uniform and Trump's nose looked normal sized.  I then created a Sprite with the scanograph and edited the nose to look  slightly larger.  On each costume of the Sprite I created a slightly larger nose.  I had to edit the background each time to match up perfectly with the others.  The first thing I noticed when I went to play my animation was that my costumes weren't aligned, so Trump's face looked like it was flickering.  Because Scratch does not have ghosting, I had to spend a ton of time adjusting the center of each costume until they lined up perfectly.  I decided the ear, top of the head and chin would be my calibration marks and I erased sections of these on each costume and adjusted the centers until they lined up perfectly with the background image.

I was a little challenged by the format of the code as well.  You are limited by the building blocks that Scratch provides you with, and the options to build your own blocks didn't quite do what I wanted.  I had to end up figuring out a way around the issue.  Instead of having one Sprite react to the location of another, I had the Sprite send a message that started the other action.  I also played around with timing a little bit, synching up the timing of each Sprite so it looked like they were reacting to each other.  These sort of work arounds would be good for students to experience too.  If they get frustrated or stalled at any point the teacher can ask them, "What are you trying to achieve? Do you think there are other ways you could make this happen?"  If a student is really stumped, the question could be brought to the whole class.

Scratch is a great tool for students.  They can use it to bring their own artwork to life, or create something entirely new.  I would have my students start out with a specific objective in mind the first time they use Scratch, since the process of trying to figure out how to use the code to accomplish their objective would be a really valuable learning experience for them.

I enjoyed working with Scratch and I really like the project I created with it.  The best part about Scratch is the fact that the code is always open for further editing.  After I published my project I decided I wanted to add to it and adjust a few things.  I reworked my code several times after publishing and it updated everywhere instantly, even in the version I had already embedded in my blog.