Scratch 1.4: Beginner’s Guide

The author of a book about Scratch 1.4 left the following message on the Scratch forums:

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My primary audience is adults - teachers, parents, novice programmers. I assume no previous programming knowledge. 

At Scratch Day, I heard several educators say they tried to stay a step ahead of their students as they simultaneously learned and integrated Scratch into their curriculum. My goal in writing this book is to give you a structured, fun introduction to creating games, stories, and multimedia projects with Scratch. 

Tinkering in Scratch encourages a steady flow of ideas. The chances are good that you'll see a hundred different ways to improve my projects. Feel free to improve them as you see fit.

Each project follows a general format: Do. Reflect. Experiment. We create projects block-by-block, pausing often to talk about Scratch features and programming concepts. Scratch inspires experimentation and I tried to encourage that tendency throughout the book. 

I'm making chapter 7 available as a sample chapter. The best way to know if you like what I wrote is to read chapter 7 Games of Fortune where we take a trip to the fortune teller. Download the PDF. 

Chapter 1 Introduction to Scratch – This chapter provides an overview of Scratch, its features, and how it can help you teach 21st century learning skills to your children and students.

Chapter 2 Install Scratch – In this chapter, we look at the installation procedure on each operating system and even learn how to run Scratch from your USB flash drive. We also make sure your web browser can view Java applets, which is the technology Scratch uses to publish projects on the Web.

Chapter 3 Start Scratching – In this chapter, we will explore the Scratch interface and create some simple scripts that demonstrate how easily we can build a project. This is a high-speed tour of Scratch that gets us tinkering and thinking about what's possible.

Chapter 4 Graphics and Slideshows – In this chapter, we will create an animated birthday card and a slideshow of our favorite photos.

Chapter 5 Language and Text – In this chapter, we horse around and develop a barnyard joke book that lets us narrate multiple scenes. There's no need to hold the applause.

Chapter 6 Arcade Games – In this chapter, we take a classic pong game and give it a little personality by adding a troll, switching levels, and keeping score.

Chapter 7 Games of Fortune – In this chapter, we combine what we know about variables with lists, also known as arrays. We use the lists to store information about our fortunes, and use random numbers to retrieve the data.

Chapter 8 Math and Finance – In this chapter, we use mathematical formulas and graphs to help answer the question, "Would you rather have a dollar that doubles every day or a lump sum of money?" The answer may surprise you.

Chapter 9 Share your Work – In this chapter, share your project with the Scratch community and learn how to promote it to you friends and fans.

Chapter 10 Connect a webcam and an external sensor board to our computer to deliver real-world stimuli as input to Scratch projects.

Appendix A Scratch Resources – This Appendix provides a select list of Scratch resources on the Web. 

Additional details can be found at Packt's web site.