Scratch - Final Draft

Scratch - Final Draft

After lots & lots & LOTS of practice with Scratch, I am happy to say that I love what I was able to create for my Final Project. I am in no way a Scratch Master, but I think the project that I was able to come up with can be used in a Preschool Classroom, and I actually plan to use in next week in the Laboratory Preschool on campus as a continuation of my Action Research Project that I've been implementing for the last week. When I started out with the creation of my project, I wanted to do something that I could possibly use with my AR Project, but wasn't sure whether I'd actually let the children play it if it didn't turn out the way I wanted it to. But, now that it has, this game will be incorporated into my AR Project, which is based on Math, and uses shape recognition as one of the sections of the project.

1. What: What is your project? How does it work? How did you come up with the idea?
My project requires the use of a keyboard to navigate "Maddie" through a maze where shapes identify themselves as she moves over them. Then, Maddie uses your help to identify shapes and their colors. I came up with the idea because I needed to direct my Scratch project to the minds of preschoolers and concepts that they learn since my background is Early Childhood Education. I thought of all the concepts that preschoolers learn throughout the year, from counting to spelling, and finally came up with an idea for them to learn shapes through an interactive game.

2. So What: What was your process for developing the project? What was interesting, surprising, or challenging? Why? What did you learn?

My process for developing the project was mainly just to have Maddie go through a maze and have shapes identify themselves, but as I progressed through the project coding, I decided to make it a little more in-depth and added a second & third level where the user has to identify the shapes and the colors. There were two parts of this project that were MOST challenging. The first was figuring out how to get the backgrounds to change as the game progressed, and the second was figuring out how to get Maddie to stop walking when it changed to the second scene, which is the "Chalkboard" scene. I tried everything I could possibly imagine, and tried to multiple times. Finally, I decided that I would use the color code that we learned about during the "Scratch Maze" Tutorial, and see if she would stop walking when her pants came into contact with the black of the chalkboard. It worked perfectly the first time I did it, and I didn't play with it anymore. 

From this project, I learned that if I can dream it, I can do it. I searched for "Shape Games" on Scratch before I began coding mine, to see if I could find a question/answer coding that had already been done, since I couldn't figure out how to put one together. When I was searching through this projects that were the result of my search, I was amazed at what some of them could do. I never imagined that I'd be able to learn coding as quick as I did, and be able to come up with a Scratch project that I'm proud of.

3. Now What: What are you the most proud of about your project? What would you change? What do you want to create next? Why?

The part of my project that I have to say I'm most proud of is being able to figure out how to get the backgrounds to change. Without figuring out how to correctly do that, there wouldn't have been a second or third level to my project, and there also wouldn't have been a starting screen that provides directions and information. The second part of the project that I'm most proud of is that is all came together nicely, and flows well. There isn't any part of the project where there's a long, uncertain pause, and I think it came together nicely.

The only change I would make on this project would be to add more levels, so that the game goes the duration of the song. The song plays continuously until it ends, but I couldn't figure out how to cut the song down to where it ended on the last level. The first time I tried it, I lost about 2 hours worth of work, because Scratch quit after an unexpected error occurred, so I wasn't about to try it again. I would like to see more shapes incorporated, more colors used, and a longer project. There aren't really any kinks to work out, but I would like to make the project longer.

I haven't given much thought to the next project I'm going to create, but it's nice to have the resources and knowledge to know how to create projects for future use. Now that I know how to do it, I will be able to create projects that I can use in my future preschool classroom, and can create a gallery of age-appropriate, and developmentally appropriate educational games for use by preschoolers.