Scratch Project

Cluster 2: Scratch Project 

            That crazy image up there is my work... yep.. looks chaotic... But before I discuss the elements in my project, let me tell you how I got to that point. I was introduced to scratch in my Learning in Digital Visual Cultures class, and immediately thought the concept of digital lego blocks in a virtual sandbox was genius. We were given the freedom to explore and have fun dissecting other scratch projects to understand the mechanics behind the finished projects. This is where my mind wondered into putting random things together, whatever I was thinking about ended up in my project.

          After working with the scratch mascot cat, and exploring the scripts that would allow the sly kitty to function, I scoured the net for some interesting sprites that the scratch cat could interact with. I picked two famed video game characters, Megaman, and Ryu.

           I used photoshop Elements to clean the sprites up, and prep them for my scratch animation short. It was a tedious process, but was worth it as they were coming together really well.

            I hit a couple of snags getting the sprites to function well. After all, I'm still new to scratch and I just took a dive. I checked out a couple of tutorials that helped me understand how these script blocks work within scratch parameters. I will admit that there were a couple of glitches, and getting these commands to flow well were pretty much... blocky (no pun intended). After some fine tuning, I got them to work the way I wanted.

       I also needed to develop a lesson plan around my scratch experience, and felt that it was suitable for middle school, and high school students to explore programing through scratch. I focused more on the exploratory aspect for high school students, and the perfect resource to help me develop my lesson plan was Scratch Ed. Scratch Ed features a worldwide collaborative effort to help create tutorials and educational activities surrounding the scratch universe, to help educators and students of any grade level learn and experience programing.  I found activity sheets that were perfect for my lesson plan. Overall, I found scratch to be a very effective tool to help bridge the digital gap with students who use programs for their convenience but don't understand the codes that are essential in allow them to interact with its digital contents.