U4 Day 1: PD Discussion Topic
How do you recover assignments that did not save?
Hi Lynda,
Are you talking about on Scratch? The projects save automatically if you run them so they should be under your projects. If they for some reason did not save at all I donāt know if there is a way to recover them.
-Dani
I could introduce student to the Scratch 2.0 environment by sharing this video with them first and then have them open Scratch and have them follow me (via a projected image of my computer screen) as I point and click on some āblocksā, tabs and resources around the browser based editor or offline editor. The I could share with them my name.sb file that I created (to include as many features as possible). After showing them the animation we could deconstruct the programming and āblockā structure behind each sprite animation used.
Iāve never used Scratchā¦ I am looking forward to introducing it to my studentsā¦
Iām glad to hear that Iām not the only one who has not ever used Scratch. I too am looking forward to learning it and teaching itā¦it looks fun and engaging!
kids like scratch, problem is there are some files that kids can not access, so far we have just been making the most of it.
For some learners scratch is not immediately intuitive. I start off by using a theater production analogy. The stage is what the audience sees, they need to know that whatever is in the rest of scratch is invisible to the final user.
Then we have the sprites which are actors. You can use the predefined actors or draw in or import a picture of your own.
The right side of the screen shows what is owned by each actor or sprite. Sprites have costumes, sound effects and scripts. The script is what the character āreadsā off of. Just like how scripts determine not only speaking lines but also actions, we have many block types that specify a different type of action.
For those who are using scratch the first time, it is very important to have students see the event block, I describe them as the cue for the actor to read the line. You can click on blocks to trigger code for testing but it is very important for students to know that blocks should be triggered by events.
As a starting activity, you can use broadcast blocks to do a conversation between characters. Broadcast blocks are important because they are how one sprite can cue another into taking action.
Once the students know about event blocks and broadcast blocks they start to get it pretty quickly.
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To get students comfortable with using the tabs a preview of the tabs in actions can be shown to students.
I wonāt get into programming until next semester. It seems like with all the constant testing and voc stuff, one thing or another pushes us behind. 
I plan on doing a brief introduction by showing them a game that I created, using Scratch: Pong and then letting them view it. From there, introduce them via the tutorials. Iāve not used Scratch in-depth, however I am quite familiar with Alice, soā¦same concept, different app.
I would introduce them to scratch by giving them the lesson plan showing them how to create a GIF then have them add a background to their staging area. Then ask them to play with the blocks to animate the sprite (GIF) to dance across the background.
I showed videos that allowed the students to follow to help acquaint them with the components of scratch.
I showed the introduction video and allowed my students to play with scratch before showing them more. It helped because they were able to figure a lot out before I showed them.
View Scratch videos with students will show students the basics and create interest in the program.
I plan to show the introductory videos to the students, then allow them some time to explore the Scratch interface.
I think allowing students to have exploration time is key. I would ask that they click around at all of the tabs/headings to see what they do and then after 10-15 minutes I would have each group share out what they found/figured out.
I did the same thing, too. I showed the intro video and then introduced the different tutorials. My students seemed to enjoy ātinkeringā around in Scratch and were engaged the entire class period!
Does anyone have answers or solutions on how to download the name.sb file?
So my plan is just introducing them to Scratch and get them signed up for an account. then I am going to have them play with the dance party example to just explore and play https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/10128067/ . To introduce this section I would have one person create their first project the following day and have them choose the first letter of one students name, and play with all the different scripts, sprites, sounds etc. I will be giving them a worksheet to have them tell me how they got their letters to do specific thingsā¦ and I will put them in teams for that activityā¦one person explores the other writes. The following day I would have them complete their full name and give them each a rubric. I will be adding to the rubric that they will present their names to the classā¦ so others can ask questions on how did they do certain things?! I have also found 3 other examples of other people and what they had done, just to give them a vision of how far they can choose to take this.
The most important thing for me is to give them time to explore and play with it. I showed them how to find sprites they really like on the internet, such as Nintendo sprites, and students really love this. I encourage them to pull up games and re-mix/reverse engineering them, and I also have them step through the online tutorials and turn in projects based on those. Sharing these projects with classmates is also really helpful; they love to show off some cool bit of code they came up with.