White Paper on KLiC Scratch Programming
COURTESY :- vrindawan.in
Wikipedia
Scratch is a high-level block-based visual programming language and website aimed primarily at children as an educational tool for programming, with a target audience of ages 8 to 16. Users on the site, called Scratchers, can create projects on the website using a block-like interface. Projects can be exported to HTML5, JavaScript, Android apps, Bundle (mac OS) and EXE files using external tools. The service is developed by the MIT Media Lab, has been translated into 70+ languages, and is used in most parts of the world. Scratch is taught and used in after-school centers, schools, and colleges, as well as other public knowledge institutions. As of May 8, 2022, community statistics on the language’s official website show more than 104 million projects shared by over 90 million users, over 686 million total projects ever created (including unshared projects), and more than 100 million monthly website visits.
Scratch takes its name from a technique used by disk jockeys called “scratching”, where vinyl records are clipped together and manipulated on a turntable to produce different sound effects and music. Like scratching, the website lets users mix together different media (including graphics, sound, and other programs) in creative ways by creating and ‘remixing’ projects, like video games, animations, music, and simulations.
The Scratch interface is divided into three main sections: a stage area, block palette, and a coding area to place and arrange the blocks into scripts that can be run by pressing the green flag or clicking on the code itself. Users may also create their own code blocks and they will appear in “My Blocks”.
The stage area features the results (e.g., animations, turtle graphics, either in a small or normal size, with a full-screen option also available) and all sprites thumbnails being listed in the bottom area. The stage uses x and y coordinates, with 0,0 being the stage center.
With a sprite selected at the bottom of the staging area, blocks of commands can be applied to it by dragging them from the block palette into the coding area. The Costumes tab allows users to change the look of the sprite with a vector and bitmap editor in order to create various effects, including animation. The Sounds tab allows attaching sounds and music to a sprite.
When creating sprites and also backgrounds, users can draw their own sprite manually, choose a Sprite from the library, or upload an image.
An offline “Desktop Editor” for Scratch 3.0 is available for Microsoft Windows 10 in the Microsoft Store and Apple’s MacOS 10.13; this allows the creation and playing of Scratch programs offline. The offline editor can also be downloaded in previous versions, such as Scratch 2.0 and Scratch 1.4 (an archive of older versions are found here).
In Scratch, extensions add extra blocks and features that can be used in projects. In Scratch 2.0 and 3.0, the extensions were all hardware-based. Software-based extensions were added in Scratch 3.0, such as text-to-speech voices, along with some new hardware-based extensions like the micro:bit. The extensions are listed below.
Scratch 3.0 is a completely new JavaScript-based code base made up of multiple components such as “Scratch-GUI,” now based on a library from Blockly, “Scratch-VM,” which interprets code, and “Scratch-Render,” the rendering engine. The Scratch Blocks are made using Blockly.
A paper published in 2019 by NYU argues and illustrates, for coding music with Scratch, “that the music and sound blocks as currently implemented in Scratch may limit and frustrate meaningful music-making for children, the core user base for Scratch.
Scratch is used in many different settings: schools, museums, libraries, community centers, and homes. Scratch is designed primarily for users aged 8–16, but it is used by all ages and has a size able adult user base as of 2009. This wide outreach has created many surrounding communities, both physical and digital. In April 2020, the Tiobe ranking of the world’s programming languages included Scratch into the top 20. According to Tiobe, there are 50 million projects written in Scratch, and every month one million new projects are added.
Scratch is used as the introductory language because the creation of interesting programs is relatively easy, and skills learned can be applied to other programming languages such as Python and Java.
Scratch is not exclusively for creating games. With the provided visuals, programmers can create animations, text, stories, music, and more. There are already many programs that students can use to learn topics in math, history, and even photography. Scratch allows teachers to create conceptual and visual lessons and science lab assignments with animations that help visualize difficult concepts. Within the social sciences, instructors can create quizzes, games, and tutorials with interactive elements. Using Scratch allows young people to understand the logic of programming and how to creatively build and collaborate.
Scratch is taught to more than 800 schools and 70 colleges of DAV organization in India and across the world.
In higher education, Scratch is used in the first week of Harvard University’s CS50 introductory computer science course.
Users of Scratch are called ‘Scratchers’. Scratchers have the capability to share their projects and get feedback. Projects can be uploaded directly from the development environment to the Scratch website and any member of the community can download the full source code to study or to remix into new projects. Scratchers can also create project studios, comment, favorite, and “love” others’ projects, follow other members to see their projects and activity, and share ideas. Projects range from games and animations to practical tools. Additionally, to encourage creation and sharing amongst users, the website frequently establishes “Scratch Design Studio” challenges.
The MIT Scratch Team works to ensure that this community maintains a friendly and respectful environment for all people.
Educators have their own online community called Scratch Ed, developed and supported by the Harvard Graduate School of Education. In this community, Scratch educators share stories, exchange resources, and ask questions.
The Scratch Wiki is a support resource for Scratch and its website, history, and phenomena surrounding it. Although supported by the Scratch Team (developers of Scratch), it is primarily written by Scratchers (users of Scratch) for information regarding the program and website.
Every year on April Fools’ Day since 2014, the wiki shows joke versions of many pages instead of the real one, even though the real version of the page can still be accessed at the bottom of the prank version. Also, Scratch hat blocks also have a cat head instead of the usual slope (see the “Events” tab for more info on cat blocks). Additionally, a semicolon has also appeared on the bottom of every page on the wiki on April Fools’ Day since 2019.
There are 3 roles. The “New Scratcher” is obtained by creating an account. As they progress into more social things, like loving, liking, and sharing projects, they will be asked if they want the “Scratcher” role. The “Scratch Team” role, which is a role given out to people who moderate and develop Scratch. Scratch Team roles will have an asterisk at the end of their username.
Scratch Educators can gather in person at Scratch Educator Meetups. At these gatherings, Scratch Educators learn from each other and share ideas and strategies that support computational creativity.
An annual “Scratch Week”, formerly known as “Scratch Day”, is declared in May each year. Community members are encouraged to host an event on or around this day, large or small, that celebrates Scratch. These events are held worldwide, and a listing can be found on the Scratch Day website. Scratch Week is a series focusing on Scratch activities on the Scratch website.
Every April Fools’ Day, the Scratch Team will play pranks on users and add Easter eggs, one example being turning all the event blocks into cat versions of the same blocks these blocks were called “cat blocks” and can be downloaded as one of the many downloadable Scratch add-ons.
In the early 2000s, the MIT Media Lab’s Lifelong Kindergarten group (LLK) was developing visual programming languages targeted towards children. In 2003, Mitchel Resnick, Yasmin Kafai, and John Maeda were awarded a National Science Foundation grant for the development of a new programming environment for children to express themselves with code. The LLK, led by Mitchel Resnick, in partnership with Yasmin Kafai’s team at UCLA worked closely with Computer Clubhouses in Boston and Los Angeles to develop Scratch, grounding its design in the practices and social dynamics of these after-school youth centers. It started as a basic programming language, with no labeled categories and no green flag. Similar to Agent Sheets Scratch employed concepts of Tactile Programming later known as blocks-based programming. Scratch was made with the intention to teach kids to program.
The philosophy of Scratch encourages the sharing, reuse, and combination of code, as indicated by the team slogan, “Imagine, Program, Share”. Users can make their own projects, or they may choose to “remix” someone else’s project. Projects created and remixed with Scratch are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License. Scratch automatically gives credit to the user who created the original project and program in the top part of the project page.
Scratch was developed based on ongoing interaction with youth and staff at Computer Clubhouses. The use of Scratch at Computer Clubhouses served as a model for other after-school centers demonstrating how informal learning settings can support the development of technological fluency.
Scratch 2.0 was released on 9 May 2013. The update changed the look of the site and included both an online project editor and an offline editor. Custom blocks could now be defined within projects, along with several other improvements. The Scratch 2.0 Offline editor could be downloaded for Windows, Mac and Linux directly from Scratch’s website, although support for Linux was later dropped. The unofficial mobile version had to be downloaded from the Scratch forums.
Scratch 3.0 was first announced by the Scratch Team in 2016. Several public alpha versions were released between then and January 2018, after which the pre-beta “Preview” versions were released. A beta version of Scratch 3.0 was released on 1 August 2018. for use on most browsers; with the notable exception of Internet Explorer.