About Scratch
Scratch is the world’s largest
coding community for children and
a coding language with a simple
visual interface that allows young
people to create digital stories,
games, and animations. Scratch is
designed, developed, and
moderated by the Scratch
Foundation, a nonprofit
organization.
Scratch promotes computational
thinking and problem solving skills;
creative teaching and learning;
self-expression and collaboration;
and equity in computing.
Scratch is always free and is
available in more than 70
languages.
SCRATCH
Scratch is an online programming language used by
millions of people around the world. You can create
a lot with it - games, animations, stories, and more!
It is developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten Group
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in
Massachusetts.
The way it works is by dragging blocks together to
create scripts. The scripts are made with blocks,
making it a very low chance for errors.
Scratch is a high-level block-based visual
programming language and website aimed
primarily at children as an educational tool, with
a target audience of ages 8 to 16.[6] Users on
the site, called Scratchers,[7] can create projects
on the website using a block-like interface.
Projects can be exported
to standalone HTML5, Android apps, Bundle
(macOS) and EXE files using external tools.
Scratch was conceived and designed through
collaborative National Science
Foundation grants awarded to Mitchell
Resnick and Yasmin Kafai.[8] The service is
developed by the MIT Media Lab, and has been
translated into 70+ languages, and is used in
most parts of the world.[9] Scratch is taught and
used in after-school centers, schools, and
colleges, as well as other public knowledge
institutions. As of 15 February 2023, community
statistics on the language's official website
show more than 123 million projects shared by
over 103 million users, over 804 million total
projects ever created (including unshared
projects), and more than 95 million monthly
website visits.[9]
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.[10][11]
Scratch 3.0
User interface
A program to change the
background and make a character speak, when
clicked
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.
[12]
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.
[12]
The Sounds tab allows attaching sounds and
music to a sprite.[13]
When creating sprites and also backgrounds,
users can draw their own sprite manually,
[12]
choose a Sprite from the library, or upload an
image.[13]
The table below shows the categories of the
programming blocks:
Offline editing
An offline "Desktop Editor" for Scratch 3.0 is available for
Microsoft Windows 10 and above in the Microsoft Store,
Apple's macOS, ChromeOS, and Android;[14] 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 is found here).
Extensions
In Scratch, extensions add extra blocks and features that
can be used in projects. In Scratch 2.0, 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.
An example of the
Scratch 3 Extensions Page.
Physical
LEGO Mindstorms EV3 – Control motors and receive
sensor data from the Lego Mindstorms EV3
Makey Makey – Use Makey Makey to control projects
LEGO Education WeDo 2.0 – control motors and
receive sensor data from the Lego WeDo
micro:bit – Use of a micro:bit to control projects
LEGO BOOST – Bring robotic creations to life
Go Direct Force & Acceleration – Sense pull, push,
motion, and spin
Digital
Many of the digital extensions in Scratch 3.0 used to be
regular block categories that were moved to the
extensions section to reduce clutter. These include:
Music – Play digital instruments (drums, trumpets,
violins, pianos, and more)
Pen – Draw on the Stage with a variety of thicknesses
and color
Video Sensing – Detect motion with the camera
New digital extensions have also been added in
collaborations with commercial companies. These include:
Text to Speech – Converts words in a text into voice
output (variety of voices, supplied by Amazon)
Translate – Uses Google Translate to translate text from
one language into a variety of other languages,
including Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, English, French,
Greek, Norwegian, and Japanese
