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1. Introducing ‘Scratch’ Hello. Today, I’m going to introduce a computer program that is even easy for children to use called the ‘Scratch.’ ‘Scratch’ was developed at the MIT Media Lab. If you are not familiar with computer programing languages, you might have a hard time using the “Processing” language of Galileo. That’s why many people start with ‘Scratch’ to learn programing language concept and logic with very easy ways. So let’s get started. On your NUC computer,
▲ “Scratch” homepage
open up the “Scratch” homepage by typing in ‘scratch. mit.edu’.
Click on the “TRY IT OUT”, which is beside the orange cat. From the new window, close the tab that says “Tips: step-by-step intro” on the right side of the page by clicking on the “x” button. As you can see, ‘Scratch’ is divided into four sections. The top left section is called the ‘Stage’ and is where you can view your results. The green flag, which is on the top right corner of the stage section, lets you start and watch the program that you have created. Below the stage section is the “Sprite List”, where you can create many different types of characters. Next is the ‘Palette’, which is in the middle of the screen, on the right hand side of the Stage section. Here, the list of 10 functions has their own unique types of ‘command’ blocks. For example, on the function, ‘motion’, you can ‘command’ how many steps your character can take, or on the function, ‘sound’, you can add a drum sound to your script. The last section is the ‘Scripts Area’. By dragging various types of command ‘blocks’ from the palette and stacking the blocks together, you can create your very own programing or coding! So easy! 2
2. Changing the command blocks in the ‘Palette’ from Korean to English I simply guess that you are in Korea. Right now, the command blocks in the ‘Palette’ are all written in Korean and may be convenient for you. But once you start learning more about computer programming and go in-depth towards that field, you will notice that computer terminologies are all in English! So although it will be a bit difficult right now, starting to program in English from now on will be good for you in the long run. So to change the language setting, from your current window go to the top left corner of the page and press the orange ‘Scratch’ icon to go back to the previous ‘Scratch’ homepage. Here scroll down the page and in the middle of the page, click the arrow near ‘Korean’ and change to ‘English’.
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Okay, now that the language is set. Let’s go back to the ‘TRY IT OUT’ scratch programming screen, and check if the language has changed in the Palette.
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3. Code and execute a simple program with ‘Scratch’
From the ‘Pallete’ section click on the function ‘Looks’, and drag the very first command block that says ‘Say Hello! for 2 secs’ to the ‘Scripts area’. But here, you notice that the cat doesn’t obey your command when you press the green flag. So, in order for the cat to say ‘hello!’, click on the ‘Events’ function, and drag the top block with ‘when (green flag icon) clicked’ to the ‘Scripts area’, and join it together with the first block you dragged previously. Now, if you press the green flag button, the cat will say, ‘hello!’
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But can we do more? Of course we can! Instead of saying hello, you can make the cat say whatever you want him to say. For example, let’s say I want him to say, “Wait for me, Bob!” and about for 5 seconds. All you have to do is press on tab beside the word ‘say’ on the command block, and type in the sentence. After that, do the same thing for the length of time, and press the green flag again. Awesome, right?
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4. Saving your program to NUC and reopening it Before I save my programs in NUC, I decided to make a new folder. Then, go back to ‘Scratch’ programming page, click on ‘file’ on the top left and press ‘Download to your computer’. From the new mini window find the new folder and change the file name to “Pragram1.sb2”. Then press ‘save’. It is always safe to save your programs frequently since ‘Scratch’ is a web based. Otherwise, you might lose your program.
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Now that we know how to save our program to our computers. Let’s try opening our saved programs from ‘Scratch’. So again click on file but this time click on “Upload from your computer”. When a new window opens choose the folder that you want, click on the file that you want to open, and then press, ‘open’. If the file version is 1.4 at ‘Files of type’, you must change it to ‘Scratch 2 Project’. When a message of ‘Replace contents of the current project’ appears, click ‘OK’. Good News! You can install the Scratch 2.0 editor to work on projects without an internet connection. Download and install the files “AdobeAIRInstaller.exe” and “Scratch.air” from the homepage. Then you will see the “Scratch 2” icon created on your desktop. It is convenient to pin the icon to Taskbar.
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