I’m going back to Arlington this year to participate in the OLPC Learning Club DC’s Scratch Day event. Not only has my publisher donated some books for raffle, but Mike Lee hints to a really cool prize, “we have a special raffle prize related to robotics!”
Also from the Learning Club’s announcement, Mike Lee says, “We also expect to be able to demonstrate Scratch 1.4 running on the OLPC XO-1 laptop with support for the built-in camera and the Journal file system.”
If you’re in the neighborhood, I’d strongly recommend you stop by the Arlington Career Center. The young scratchers’ talents and capabilities are truly amazing. Click for more details.
Scratch Day 2011 is approaching and that has me on the lookout for an event near me. I came across a fun game theme from the TechPlayZone in Riverview, Florida. The rules are simple, bring an original game, consisting of one sprite and one script to the event. The game and design must be original and it must be a win or lose theme.
Though I’m too far away from this event, I like the theme and the idea and will be filing this away in my workshop ideas.
Picoboards are a great way to extend Scratch’s interactivity and to stimulate Scratch projects. The Picobard can measure resistance, light, sound, button clicks, and slider position and communicate those values to Scratch for use in our computer programs.
In chapter 10 of Scratch 1.4: Beginner’s Guide, I walk through programming examples for each Picoboard function. However, I just found the Science Buddies website that includes a few science projects that incorporate Scratch programming and the Picoboard: