Scratch Program Demo: Rutland Halloween Parade Route

This project is a starter project, as it has some pre-loaded Sprites (Halloween cartoon characters), Background images of streets along the Rutland Parade route, and Audio sounds.  The initial code scripts for the Cat going along the parade route is there to give you some ideas on how the code blocks were put together.

Rutland Halloween Parade demo Scratch project:

Scratch Project page:
scratch.mit.edu/projects/30959062/

You can copy this project and use whatever you like as far as Sprites, Backgrounds, Code and Sounds.  You can also add your own Sprites and Sounds, and use whatever Backgrounds you like.  Make the characters follow some or all of the parade route.  Have fun!

The background photos were captured as screenshots from Google Maps of downtown Rutland streets, which follow the annual Halloween Parade route (Strongs Ave. to Wales St. to West St. to Merchant’s Row to Center St.  The sprites are Halloween cartoon characters.  The programming challenge is to move your chosen character(s) through the Halloween Parade route.  Good luck!

Next Event: October 25, Learn Scratch Programming

The next event is on Saturday, October 25, 1-3PM, again at the Rutland Free Library.  We are going to do another hands-on event.  This time we are going to start working with a programming tool called “Scratch” from MIT.  For those who were unable to attend our first Scratch event back in April, this is your chance.  October 25 is also the date of the annual Rutland Halloween Parade (in the evening), so our Scratch programming activities will have a “Halloween” theme, as far as ready-to-go sprites for your Scratch program or animation.

Scratch is another visual programming tool / language.  For those of you who participated in an Code.org “Hour of Code“ event, you will notice that Scratch has some similarities to the visual programming approach of “Hour of Code”.  But Scratch has many more programming features, and introduces you to many more programming concepts and ideas.

http://scratch.mit.edu/

Scratch enables you to program your own interactive stories, games, sounds and animations.  You can also share your creations with others in the Scratch online community.  According to MIT’s website, “Scratch helps young people learn to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively — essential skills for life in the 21st century.”

At hour “Hour of Code” event back in February, one person had a question about “sprites”.  Scratch does allow you to have one or more sprites (visual graphics to represent people, animals, characters, things), that can be animated.

For each sprite, you can tell Scratch to do different things based on different “events”.  This is called event-driven programming.  For example, you could play a sound, or have a character say something in a cartoon bubble, if the user clicks on something, moves their mouse or presses a key on keyboard.  These mouse/keyboard events drive the action on the screen.

This blog also has some earlier posts regarding Scratch Programming.  Scratch is a very nice tool and way to learn and develop programs.

Hope to see you on October 25th to start to learn Scratch programming.

Ron and Steve