Planning: What is creative computing? (~15min)

• Ask students:
  • What are the different ways you interact with computers?
  • How many of those ways involve you creating with computers?
• Explain that over the next several sessions they will be creating their own interactive computational media with Scratch.
• Show a basic demo of Scratch, either through a live demo or through the Scratch overview video.
  • You build projects by snapping blocks together, just as you can build things in the physical world by snapping LEGO bricks together.
  • There are more than 100 blocks in 8 different categories.
  • As a small example, let’s make the cat do a dance.
  • Start by dragging out the “move 10 steps” block from the “Motion” blocks palette to the scripting area. Every time you click on the block the cat moves a distance of 10. You can change the number to make the cat move a greater or smaller distance.
  • From the “Sound” palette, drag out the “play drum” block. Click on the block to hear its drum sound. Drag and snap the “play drum” block below the “move“ block. When you click on this stack of two blocks, the cat will move and then play the drum sound.
  • Copy this stack of blocks (either using the Duplicate toolbar item or by right- clicking the stack and selecting “duplicate”) and snap the copy to the already- placed blocks. Change the second “move” block to -10 steps, so the cat moves backward. Every time the stack of four blocks is clicked, the cat does a little dance forward and back.
  • Go to the “Control” blocks palette and grab the “repeat” block. Wrap the “repeat” block around the other blocks in the scripting area. Now when you click on the stack, the cat dances forward and back 10 times.
  • Finally, drag the “when Sprite clicked” block and snap it to the top of the stack. Click on the cat (instead of the blocks stack) to make the cat dance.
• Show the range of projects they will be able to create, by sharing some sample projects that students will find engaging and inspiring. The Scratch website (http://scratch.mit.edu) has many interesting examples.