Hiroshima Programming Workshop

Sunday, 6 April 2014

Advanced Scratch Workshop

29-30 March 2014

This workshop was for students already proficient in Scratch. The aim was to explore more advanced features to create more sophisticated games.

There were 4 participants in this workshop. Two were bilingual Japanese and English, and two were learning English.

Day One:
variables
lists (items, attributes, highscores)
scrolling
Raspberry Pi systems administration

Day Two:
sophisticated motion - gravity, friction
simple AI - computer vs player
project work
presentation of games to parents

Files I used for teaching can be found at:
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B_YN1DuZcfFHRWZBVHhzemJiZjg&usp=sharing

Projects are online at:
http://scratch.mit.edu/studios/554708/

Sunday, 2 March 2014

Turtle Programming Fun

26 Jan and 23 Feb 2014

These two single-day workshops were for young programmers aged 6-8

In total, 16 children attended, the majority of them Japanese kids who had attended international kindergarten, and therefore knew some English. A handful had a foreign parent and were bilingual.

We began by playing the famous Kickstarted game Robot Turtles:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/danshapiro/robot-turtles-the-board-game-for-little-programmer

Then we moved on to a simulation of the game on Raspberry Pi. Finally, children used actual Scratch blocks in another turtle game.
Both of these games I created on Scratch 1.4 for Raspberry Pi, but I also uploaded versions to my Scratch account (therefore Scratch 2):

http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/16456776/

http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/17115196/

Saturday, 4 January 2014

Scratch Workshop

28-29 December 2013

There were 8 participants in this workshop, aged 11 - 15, boys and girls, mostly bilingual English and Japanese. Approximately half had some prior programming experience. During 10 workshop hours over two days, the following was presented:

Scratch UI - getting around and getting things done
Loops - forever, repeat, forever if, repeat until
if, then, else, nested ifs, testing for conditions and events
variables
broadcasts
tips for building games, and for presenting to parents

However, the bulk of the time was spent practicing these things and creating games - programming, testing, troubleshooting and so on.
We also had lunch together on both days and invited parents to a presentation at the end of the second day.
I was impressed by the variety of games created and the imagination shown.
Some of the older students produced really fine games in a short time.

Saturday, 28 December 2013

Workshop Survey

Please complete the survey below to help us improve this course. The survey is anonymous, so please be honest. Please answer in Japanese if you prefer.

Thursday, 26 December 2013

Scratch Links

Scratch Website

Share and explore Scratch projects (but not on Raspberry Pi)

http://scratch.mit.edu

Scratch Wiki

Tutorials and reference. Good for learning how to do something (like jumping, scrolling, ....)

http://wiki.scratch.mit.edu

The MagPi

Raspberry Pi magazine. Has articles about programming in Scratch. (and many other great ideas for your Pi)

http://www.themagpi.com/series/the-scratch-patch/

Workshop Files

Click the following links to access the files used in the workshop: