Building with Scratch
Continuing from our foundational course, Basics of Code 2 is all about application and build experience. Our Code Campers will use their foundational computational tools learnt in Basics of Code 1 to produce more complex graphical animations, design multiple game components and compose their own mini-programs in Scratch.
The projects built in this course will require students to think mathematically (using kinematic and geometric concepts) and apply creative solutions logically (story boarding, how to nest loops and conditionals and write event-driven programs). After this course, Code Campers will have the beginnings of their coding portfolio and obtained greater literacy in Scratch to continue coding semi-independently.
“Coding” is synonymous with “programming”. It refers to the art of writing computer code, which are instructions that a computer can follow to solve problems. Practically every facet of technology that we encounter in our daily lives - from online banking systems to video games on our iPhone, from the GPS systems we rely on navigation to the security systems that protect our homes and offices, is created from code.
At Code Campus, we start with Scratch and AppInventor - drag-and-drop block-based languages developed at MIT over more than decade for the specific purpose of teaching kids how to code. Learning to code in Scratch is a little like learning how to ride a bike by first starting with a tricycle - a tricycle can get you to places but you are not likely to compete in triathlon on one. With Scratch, kids learn the basics of the thinking process behind using computers to solve problems but what they can build is largely limited to video games, music and electronic art boards that run off the Scratch platform. Regular programming languages we hear about like Python, Java and C++ have no such restrictions and can be used to build applications across any technical domain you can think of but comes at the cost of much greater complexity and are much more difficult to set up for the beginner. Scratch and AppInventor are educational tools that allow us to separate the thinking of computer science from the operational tedium of regular languages, allowing us to introduce kids to the subject at a much earlier age and increase their future aptitude for the discipline.