Another post about using Scratch.
Once again, we were afforded the wonderful instructions published by Simon Haughton on how to create a “Simple Racing Car Game”…without this – I’m not sure I would have been able to create a Car racing game, no matter how simple.
Firstly changing the background and creating my own sprite was fairly straight forward. Creating the directions so you are able to steer the sprite (my racing car) was a little more involved, however doable, and before i knew it I was able to steer my car using my keyboard up, down, left and right arrows.
Next up, I added some words for when my car crossed the finish line. I must say, when I did this part – the whole program made a little more sense to me. I’m not sure why, it just did. The program just needed me to tell it what to do. Of course this is obvious, but when I could see how I could change it by ‘sense’ (the car sensed when it came across the red colour of the finish line to say “Well Done!”) it just clicked in my head.
Once I had programmed in further instructions (running into the grass – the specific green colour of the background to say “Bad Luck!” I was able to freely decorate as I pleased. This I found fun, however I am no artist as you can see.
NOTE: That blue blob is a pond with a duck swimming in it – can you see it? Kinda…?
What has really struck me with this program is if you do one thing wrong, it just won’t work. No matter how much clicking you do! You must make sure you have every single instruction done correctly, in the right sequence and ensure that it links, loops, stops or starts – otherwise you just end up with another version of a “Paint” program. It does make me wonder how I would teach this to a class of students. Explicit step-by-step instructions would be a must, as well as support on hand to help those who got ‘stuck’ like I did at times. However, I can see the value of this program and know that some students would relish the opportunity to create using Scratch – and no doubt be better artists than I am.