Saturday 4 January 2014

Scratch Workshop

28-29 December 2013

There were 8 participants in this workshop, aged 11 - 15, boys and girls, mostly bilingual English and Japanese. Approximately half had some prior programming experience. During 10 workshop hours over two days, the following was presented:

  • Scratch UI - getting around and getting things done
  • Loops - forever, repeat, forever if, repeat until
  • if, then, else, nested ifs, testing for conditions and events
  • variables
  • broadcasts
  • tips for building games, and for presenting to parents

However, the bulk of the time was spent practicing these things and creating games - programming, testing, troubleshooting and so on.
We also had lunch together on both days and invited parents to a presentation at the end of the second day.
I was impressed by the variety of games created and the imagination shown.
Some of the older students produced really fine games in a short time.