New Scratch Mentors Start Here

Scratch is a powerful but easy-to-use, “drag-and-drop” programming language developed at the MIT Media Lab that enables kids to create animations, games, puzzles, digital art and interactive stories.

Here are a few things to know about and try out before you come to CoderDojoTC to mentor Scratch. These are also good things to show the young coders at CoderDojoTC.

• Scratch website & Video Go to the Scratch website, accessible in any browser: https://scratch.mit.edu/ If you are new to Scratch, watch the 97 second video in the box on the right side of the page.

• Account Make a Scratch account by clicking on "Join Scratch" in the blue-grey menu bar on the top of the page, toward the right side. We strongly encourage kids to have a Scratch account to save and share their work, and you will need to know how to help many of them set up their accounts.

• Try It Out Now click "Create" in the blue-grey menu bar, or just click on the Scratch cat and green circle that says "Try it Out." Way over to your right is a short step-by-step tutorial called "Getting Started With Scratch." Highly recommended for new mentors and for new kids; do try it out. Now would be a good time.

• All Tips Above the tutorial, there's a small white menu bar with an "X" on the left side (that hides the tutorial to give you more room for your blocks of code) and a small house icon with the words "All Tips" on the right side. Click on "All Tips." This takes you to a wealth of excellent information including step-by-step guides like the one you just did, descriptions of each set of blocks, and how-tos about things you might like to try. You don't need to go through all this material before you come to mentor for the first time, but be aware that it is there and dip into it by yourself or with the CoderDojoTC kids.

• Diagram Now look at the grey menu bar at the far top of the page. Find the question mark (?) in the middle of the menu bar and double click on it. This brings up a diagram on the right that shows and names the different area of the Scratch screen.

• Save It It's also good to know how to make a title (in the menu bar above the "Stage") and how to Save your program (click the word "Save" at the far right of the top grey menu bar.) The Scratch logo on the far left of the grey menu bar will take you back to the original home page.

• Starter Projects Many kids enjoy looking at existing projects and making mods to them. There's a great collection of "Starter Projects" here and you can see the actual code used by clicking on the blue "See Inside" button on the far right. After you've done that, you can click on the orange "Remix" button (far right) to get your own copy of that project to modify. Note: To navigate to the Starter projects from the Create screen, first click the Scratch logo (far left of the grey menu bar.) Then click on "Help" (middle of blue-grey menu bar.) Then click on "Explore these Starter Projects" (under the middle square.)

Happy mentoring!

Contact [email protected] if there are other tips you'd like to share with the Scratch mentors.