The wonder of scratch: A day at the beach eating tacos 11-1 & 2

I am completely new to coding and scratch. It is a fascinating and diverse program. There is such a range of options and abilities that it can do. For this project we were asked to create a video game. Since I had no idea where to start, I started looking up games that were previously created and looked at their coding. I had such a hard time, I asked a friend to give me a mini lesson on how it worked. This is a modify version, with a lot of tweaking, on lnhphng's video game. There are some similarities in them but, I was able to make some interesting changes which I think enhances the game. 

Two takeaways that I would use in the classroom are 

1) Scratch is a great and FREE platform for students can learn coding in a creative way. With ample time to experiment, students can create different types of platforms for projects. For a curriculum, my partners and I decided to have almost half a year on an in depth look in scratch. They will be able to really look at many of the aspects of scratch and come up with an interesting game. This tie with tech and art can really push for schools to try to have more access to technology or pose a grant to have more of it in the classroom. Videogames are ingrained in students and this process of having them make their own will hopefully allow them to really appreciate how videogames are created. 

2) Scratch is not only good for creating games, but other things as well. I think it is important for students and generally everyone to understand coding. This is just a simpler way of understanding it. It is also visually stimulating and fun. It is important to make the activity engaging and I really feel that this accomplishes this. Other than acquiring the technology to use scratch, it is a free and creative way to understand coding. If you take the time to learn it, it can be a great tool to have in the classroom.