Book Image

Scratch 1.4: Beginner's Guide

Book Image

Scratch 1.4: Beginner's Guide

Overview of this book

If you have the imaginative power to design complex multimedia projects but can't adapt to programming languages, then Scratch 1.4: Beginner's Guide is the book for you. Imagine how good you'll feel when you drag-and-drop your way to interactive games, stories, graphic artwork, computer animations, and much more using Scratch even if you have never programmed before. This book provides teachers, parents, and new programmers with a guided tour of Scratch's features by creating projects that can be shared, remixed, and improved upon in your own lesson plans. Soon you will be creating games, stories, and animations by snapping blocks of "code" together. When you program you solve problems. In order to solve problems, you think, take action, and reflect upon your efforts. Scratch teaches you to program using a fun, accessible environment that's as easy as dragging and dropping blocks from one part of the screen to another. In this book you will program games, stories, and animations using hands-on examples that get you thinking and tinkering. For each project, you start with a series of steps to build something. Then you pause to put our actions into context so that you can relate our code to the actions on Scratch's stage. Throughout each chapter, you'll encounter challenges that encourage you to experiment and learn. One of the things you're really going to love is that, as you begin working through the examples in the book, you won't be able to stop your imagination and the ideas will stream as fast as you can think of them. Write them down. You'll quickly realize there are a lot of young minds in your home, classroom, or community group that could benefit from Scratch's friendly face. Teach them, please.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Scratch 1.4 Beginner's Guide
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
Preface
Scratch Resources
Index

Customize your Scratch installation


Scratch 1.4 includes several options to help you customize Scratch for networked environments found in many schools, community centers, and other learning environments. In order to set these custom options, you must edit the Scratch.ini configuration file, which can be found in the root of the Scratch installation.

On a default installation, you will find the Scratch.ini file at C:\Program Files\Scratch\Scratch.ini.

The following table includes a list of several customizations that you could deploy in your Scratch installations.

Customization

Example Scratch.ini options

Description

Disable the share button

Share=0

By default, users have the ability to share projects to the Scratch web site. This option disables sharing.

Hide network and local drives

VisibleDrives=Y:,Z:

The VisibleDrives option restricts access to the drives specified. If the VisibleDrives option is not set, users can see all drives connected to the computer.

Set custom home folder...