My Scratch Projects. By María Concepción Pomar Rosselló

I love coding through Scratch, a tool created by MIT University. It is great for people who are not skilled enough to actually write codes but who understand the logic of the options this phenomenal tool offers. If I had more time, I would devote it to learn to code much better, and manage bigger projects. This is a great TED talk about what Scratch can offer to users:

By now, I have created three Scratchs. I'll describe them below:

Demonstrative and possessive pronouns and determiners. This was a project that I reformed for Laia, a former student at VIU, now graduated. Her code wasn't working well and we didn't know why. After some research, we were able to correct the coding and now the game works perfectly. It was a phenomenal team work with a student to solve this problem. I'm very proud of this experience. This Scratch game in particular is more grammar-oriented, but presented in an attractive manner.

The Sky is Painted Blue. One of the best things of Scratch is its users' community. You can take a project by another author and change it according to your preferences and needs. This was a project based on the work by H3R0_0F_T1M3. He developed a painting game. I added some more codes for a better presentation and a basic introduction to the passive voice, together with voice and definitions. H3R0_0F_T1M3 himself told me that he loved the result. This Scratch game is intended for younger children at primary schools playing with their iPad. Thus, they play and learn about vocabulary of colours and the passive in a fun manner. 

Princess Eleanor's Castle. This has been by far my most ambitious project. I have used images of a cute character, a princess in a blue gown, shared through Creative Commons, to animate her and make her interactive. I have also added my voice and text on screen. With this game, you can learn about numbers, animals, and letters. It is a bit heavy to load but I'm in love with the result. I would like to create more projects like this one. 

This is a screen capture of the code I have used for the creation of this game. Everybody visiting my games, if going to the section "See inside", will see the codes used for the creation of these projects.

Despite its apparent complexity, Scratch is very easy to learn to use. In their web page they add tutorials to learn how to get started. It's so much fun to play with Scratch and all you can do with it! I really encourage all educators to consider this tool for the creation of didactic material.

Thanks for watching and kindest regards.

María Concepción Pomar