Scratch

I agree that Scratch can be used to teach other things besides beginning programming.  Take a look at my first two efforts at:
http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/LodiJoe/8768
http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/LodiJoe/8770

If you want to make this style of project/animation as an adult, you really ought to check out Squeak itself.  It's only a little harder than Scratch, I promise.  (You could just use eToys to animate things-- it's a lot like Scratch, but with a much broader range of tiles to choose from.)

Squeak has always had an educational mission, and there's a lot of teaching resources already available, physics simulations & so forth.

<3

Have just posted two projects designed specifically for use in Literacy with classes, groups or pairs. These are adaptations of programs originally written in HTML and used with children in the 7-13 age bands. I've added a separate post into this forum for anyone who is interested ('Two projects to help encourage discussion and imagination').

Projects are -

THE STORYTELLER
http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/mohlar/15939

ELEMENTS
http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/mohlar/15938

Both of these use a very basic way to place text - I'll produce an updated variant at some time that uses x and y to place the sprites, but I just wanted something ultra simple at first.

Last edited by mohlar (2007-06-23 10:33:37)

'Storyteller' has been reworked to place lines of text using x and y.
Instead of simply re-writing the original idea, I made a spell-casting demo.

http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/mohlar/16289

Feel free to adapt as you wish.

Galleries are one area that, to a relative newcomer to Scratch  like myself, are still a bit of a mystery. Is there a FAQ posting or a good summary description somewhere?

I particularly don't understand who can create a gallery (I think anyone), who can post in a gallery (anyone -  but the owner??) and who can delete something from the gallery (owner only?).  Also are there other owner priviledges/responsibilities - such as needing to check that nothing inappropriate got posted - or is this handled by an administrator?

It's this last area that has made me a bit hesitant in starting my own gallery.

Last edited by DrJim (2007-06-24 12:45:25)

Thanks for the information, although I was hoping for a different answer.  It's the "no owner delete" part that really worries me - having seen problems on other sites.

I'm not even sure how you post a project into a specific gallery anyway - are there any instructions anywhere?

I've just skimmed through the gallery list and found it to be a quite depressing experience - lots of innane titles and themes and page after page of them as well, so it becomes tiring to sift through them all. I was looking for one particular gallery but gave up after 5 pages of mostly-piffle. I got the impression that some users create a gallery to feel somehow important within the great Scratch scheme of things. There were exceptions, of course, but not many.

This, I fear, could become an increasingly big stumbling block for Scratch if some measure of control isn't taken by the Scratch Team. There are already posts in other forums and threads about problems people are having deciding whether projects are copies; whether some users have multiple identities to boost their own 'favourite' status; whether some users add masses of pointless or empty comments just to increase their comment tally. Democracy is one thing - but some measure of external control is still needed.

I wonder if having strands of galleries is an option, like monitored vs unmonitored discussions.  People interested in the random creation of galleries could still do their postings while the monitored galleries would control content to fit a specific description.

Karen