Scratch 3.0: A guide for teachers, parents and students

Welcome to the course! You will be learning a how to code from a former elementary school teacher now teaching master’s in education teachers how to code at a technology course at the University of California. This course will teach you how to bring your stories to life through computer coding. We will be using colorful coding blocks that fit together like puzzle pieces to create a cartoon version of a story using Scratch programming language. This is a blockbased coding language, which is a great place to start before moving into text based languages. The different coding skills are easier to see. You will be learning about initialization, loops, conditional statements and variables by learning how to: place characters and have them move, pick a setting, have the characters speak to one another, change the number of seconds characters are speaking, have characters hide and re-appear, locate new settings, introduction to code saving techniques, download images from online, uploading those images and altering them, introduction to paint tools, modifying existing characters, adding sound to your story through your own voice or through options in Scratch library and many more. Please do not hesitate to reach out if you have any questions about the course. In addition to learning about a story you will also learn about classroom setup techniques and strategies to use while teaching kids how to code. Scratch was designed with the goal to let children being the creative makers and creators without just having content created by adults given to them. You will be surprised what they come up with.