All Blog Posts (159)

We have a new improved and updated Scratch Game booklet for Scratch 2.0. Kelley Meister, and instructor at the Science Museum just reviewed and revised the new edition! The booklet is a printable pdf (in color or b/w) you can give out to your Scratchers to help support the game design process. We've found this is a great way to design and develop ideas into games, and to take notes throughout the development process.

Dowload: …

The American Library Association published a book based on the Media Mashup project. You can find it on the  ALA website,  Amazon.com and an…

Sarah Ludwig blogged about how to learn Scratch over on the YALSA blog. She gave a nice shout out to Media Mashup:

Media Mashup. This site, created especially for libraries, offers a lot of cool stuff, including its screencasts page. The pirate ship tutorial was the single-most-useful thing I did in preparing to teach Scratch. I probably said “ohhhhh, OKAY,” about a…

Over the past several weeks I've had the chance to look at some of the data collected as a part of the Media Mashup evaluation, including:

• Data on youth use of Scratch in formal and informal Media Mashup learning environments.
• Continued use of Scratch by youth that took part in Media Mashup programs.
• 21st century skill acquisition as a part of formal and informal Scratch programs.

Discoveries related to youth that participated in…

Clutter is a new Scratch website that lets you link projects together. Go to clutter.scratch.mit.edu.

This may be a great way to explore projects such…

Hey guys,

I finally have had some success installing our brand new Bamboo Drawing Tablets. We, in Memphis, had kind of been at an impasse as far as a replacement for ArtRage in Ubuntu. After a suggestion on an internet site, I have downloaded MyPaint. It is great. If you have drawing tablets, it's the perfect application! Not only is it free, but it offers much more creative possibilities than the free version of ArtRage 2.5. Enough commercial time, off to play!…

Hey guys,

Thanks again for all the wonderful ideas and inspiration last week. Our meeting gave me a much needed boost of energy heading into the summer. Today I made two 'sample' Scratch Programs. A very basic one following the Introduction to Animation directions, and a Magic 8 Ball inspired by Janet's project.

The basic one I am thinking of running with our 6-12 year old crowd. If we make it past the basics, then I am thinking of introducing the 'sound'…

This is part of the My Excellent Vacation template- a project to bring together Scratch and google docs!

Here's the link if you want to use and share this.
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=106768195163137828967.0004818dea6e7f0c05abb&z=2

On June 29th my co-workers in the Children’s Department and I are running a Scratch program for children ranging in age from 6-12. I haven’t run a program with participants quite this young. This change has come as a result of meeting two phenomenal nine year olds, pacsponge and flimflamjj. They took to Scratch more quickly than my teens and have made some really great programs in the process.

Any suggestions/experiences working with younger…

Hey guys,

Still trying to resolve some Ubuntu bug issues and sounds in Scratch. Unfortunately, due to the flooding here in Tennessee our internet capabilites here have been sporatic. Still trying to find a friend or co-worker with internet access and the ability to burn a LiveCD of Ubuntu 9.1 or higher!

Also, at a meeting yesterday, I was informed that I will be teaching Teen Tech Camp again. It seems our outside instructor has fallen through. :) So, now I am…

The Brooklyn Park Library's Teen Tech Squad went on the road to lead a workshop at Sumner Library in Minneapolis last week. None of us had ever visited this library before so it was kind of cool to see a completely different building in a completely different community.

The workshop took place in a meeting room in the basement of this split-level library. After a rocky start with various technology mishaps, the youth instructors launched into their workshop presentation with…