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

Summary


Congratulations on creating your first two Scratch programs. If you're like me, you have more project ideas floating around your head than you can possibly process. That's part of what makes Scratch so fun. It's easy to turn ideas into projects, in part because everything we need is available within Scratch.

We introduced design as a central concept to our Scratch projects because so much of what we do is visual. As you create future projects, you should experiment with typography, graphic effects, motion, and design in order to get the most out of your project. Don't be afraid to answer the question, "What happens if I ... ?"

Of course, design only gets us so far. We needed to animate our sprites, so we worked with control blocks to start and stop the action and develop timing. Through our scripts, we manipulated the looks and motion, which further affected the design.

Now, you may be wondering how to share your projects. If you can't wait, jump to Chapter 9 and find out how. Then...