Wednesday, 15 January 2014

Scratch

I missed the session where we were supposed to use the software 'scratch' but luckily it is available to use online for free so I was able to catch up at home. 

Scratch is a programme that allows children to programme their own stories, games and animations.  It allows for them to share their creations with other people who are also using Scratch. This is useful as they get to see what other people have done with the software and can get some ideas about what to do. 

When I first started the programme, I found it very difficult to understand. It took me ages to make my animation do something as simple as move forwards properly. 

After hours of playing around with it I managed to get my animation (a unicorn) to do the Thriller dance! Exciting stuff! 

There are so many things you can do with Scratch, whether just giving a picture a simple list of instructions to follow (what I've done so far) or you can create a game! 

I understand why schools are increasingly using this software in classrooms. 

It is hard to control and does take a while to figure out, but I got there eventually! 

Yay! 

Using 'Hopscotch' to build a house!

Today's session was about using an app called Hopscotch. We started off basic, figuring out how to get the right commands to build different shapes e.g. triange, squeare and hexagons. We then was asked to make a house using the coding we learned by making the shapes! 

It was really hard to do, and for a while my shapes were all over the place! 

 After about 1000 attempts I finally got the hang of it and I made a very basic house. 

 Check out my house here...

 http://hop.sc/1cnEvM9 

 This session was really frustrating but it felt so good when I finally understood what was going on! :D