Scratch Day 2 @ SoC

We are a little too excited to put off the blog posting to this evening, so here we are, blogging live from the classroom. It is great to see the students get right on to the Scratch Cards, multitasking that as they listen to Dr Bimlesh's Scratch lessons for the day. We see a lot self-designed sprites today as they prepare to do individual submissions tomorrow. Some even pull images off the web to use as sprites, like her:

May not appear so, but she is really browsing for sprites.

What we really like is when students start to use blocks to add behaviour to the sprites and backgrounds. Now that is real Scratching! Spotted sprite animations are:

• Movement of body parts (Rosanne's little chicken).
• Fade-in, fade-out effects (a simple example of this can be found in the Scratch Jellyfish example, by the way).
• Movement of real world objects like door opening.
• Whole body movement (someone made her sprite walk, stop and wave "hi").
• Zoom-in, zoom-out effects (Grace and Wan Ting's fruit project).

While we are on the subject - NYGH folks, if you're reading this! - here are some tips and notes that might be useful:

• When you build your blocks and start to see a lot of repetitions (for example you might use the "wait x secs" and "change ghost effect by x" blocks repeatedly to achieve fade-in/out), consider putting the repeating blocks in a "repeat" or "forever" block instead. Repeating blocks are normally good indication that a loop should come in play.
• If you click on a sprite on the Sprite List and it does not appear on the Stage, it could be that you have used the "hide" block in the script. Scratch does not reset the sprites, so you will have to show it by right clicking the sprite on the Sprite List and pick "Show", or drag the "show" block to the script and run that.
• There are several ways to make sprite animations follow one after the other. The "Dear Mom" Scratch Card example today uses the "broadcast" block. Alternatively, we may also use the "wait x secs" block, but think of why the "broadcast" block might be better...
• Sprites and scripts can be shared and reused! Just export your sprites and open them in another project. To export a sprite and its attached scripts, go to File > Export Sprite.

Back to the day's updates - here is a glimpse of today:

Everyone's busy a-Scratching.

Busy, busy.

Something is brewing here. This pic is deliberately taken at a distance so as not to reveal too much...

That's it for Day 2. The individual Sprites and group Scratch Day Posters are due tomorrow and we can't wait to see those!

- Bimlesh & Juliana