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

Install the PicoBoard


congratulations on your PicoBoard purchase. As you inventory your package, make sure you have the following items:

  • PicoBoard

  • Serial port to USB connector

  • four sets of alligator clips

Before we can start using the PicoBoard, we must ensure our computers have the proper drivers installed. The driver is just a term tech people use to sound smart, but it's really just some software we install on our computer to make the PicoBoard work properly with Scratch.

Windows Vista users can rest for a minute while the rest of us install the necessary software.

Driver installation is straightforward. Go to www.picocricket.com/picoboardsetup.html, and click on the download link for your operating system to download the file to your computer.

After the file downloads, unzip it using whatever tools are available on your computer. Usually, double-clicking on the file will display the contents of the ZIP file so you can extract it. Extract the setup file to your desktop and double-click it...