A note to teachers...
Just a reminder to everyone that today is Scratch Day, to help promote Computer Science to all students. (this is NOT just for CS classes!)
For each of my classes today (not just ICS) I have a simple plan:
Give the students a quick demo of how to drag, drop, and place the various actions and run their program in Scratch
Give the students a quick overview of the short tutorials available at http://learnscratch.org/video-courses/scratch-1
Let them experiment for ~15 minutes.
Have a quick show and tell of some of the more advanced programs.
Show them where they can access the online featured projects at http://scratch.mit.edu/channel/featured.
Let them experiment for the remainder of the period, and save and submit their best work.
One last quick show and tell.
It should be fun!
You can download Scratch from here: http://info.scratch.mit.edu/Scratch_1.4_Download, or alternatively, run Scratch directly online at http://beta.scratch.mit.edu.
For those that have restrictions about installing software in their labs, Scratch will run portably (ie no install, just unzip). If you need it, I've posted a zip files of the Scratch folder here, which I will leave available for at least a few days. Just unzip it and put the folder where students can access it to copy to their home drives.
If you're apprehensive about doing this because you don't know Scratch, just open it and experiment for yourself for just 60 seconds to see how easy it is. Kids are extremely self-motivated with Scratch, and the results by the end of the class will amaze you.
Have fun!
-Peter
Links
Scratch Day Canada, on CanCompEd website
zip version (to run portably) (this link may only be available for a short time)
Alternatively, you can run Scratch directly online at http://beta.scratch.mit.edu.