2.1 Scr0110: getting started

Table of contents

• Preface
  • Let's have some fun in the process of learning
  • Fully interactive operating mode
• Setup your computer to use Scratch
  • Run the tutorials
    • Programming fundamentals
  • Will concentrate on the fundamentals
  • Drag and drop programming
  • Mechanics are difficult to explain
  • Advantages and disadvantages
  • Run some student projects
  • View the Help menu in the Scratch development environment
    • Selecting Help Page...
    • Selecting Help Screens...
• What's next?
• Resources
• Miscellaneous

Preface

This module is one in a collection of modules designed to help beginners of all ages (8 and up) learn how to create the code for computer programs. Information is provided not only for the beginners themselves but also for theirparents and teachers where appropriate.

The purpose of this module is to get you started programming in Scratch .

Let's have some fun in the process of learning

Scratch was designed not only to be a good learning resource, it was also designed to make learning to program fun. After all, if you and/or your studentsare going to invest the time to learn how to write computer programs, you might as well have a little fun along the way. I suggest that you go to the Scratch home page and click on a few projects to see what I mean. Just keep in mind that many of the projectsthat you will find there were written by youngsters and may or may not work as advertised.

One of my favorite Scratch projects is named Son of String Art (hopefully it is still there). You should be able to click on the little yellow shapes in the green buttons at the top of theviewing area and see your shape constructed with strings resembling the string art of the sixties.

Fully interactive operating mode

Note the use of the word interactive in the above header. What you will see when you select a Scratch project on the MIT website isn't simply apassive embedded video like you might see at YouTube or Vimeo . Instead it is a fully interactive program that allows you to control the program by clicking buttons,etc., provided of course that the program was written to be used in an interactive mode.

Setup your computer to use Scratch

The first programming language that I will use to help you learn about computer programming is Scratch . (I explained quite a bit about Scratch in the earlier module titled Scr0100: Scratch Overview .) Therefore, the first thing that you need to do is to get your computer setup to run Scratch. Go to the Scratch download page (see Resources ) to download and install the free Scratch software.

I am assuming that you already know how to download and install software on your computer. I installed Scratch version 1.4 on a Windows 7 machine a few days ago.I also reinstalled Scratch on an older Windows XP machine in order to upgrade to version 1.4.Everything went smoothly with no difficulties in either case. (I haven't tried Scratch with Windows 8 as of this writing but several people on theScratch forum are reporting "no problem" with Scratch on Windows 8..)