From then on, your knowledge just builds and you don’t really need a teacher, just some natural curiosity. How do I do this?” So the idea is that you would mess around with it for a bit, or if you can’t figure it out because you don’t know which block does what, you can go watch a 90-second YouTube video about that block, and then you know. Really, it’s one of those things you can learn just by messing around and then you get a feeling of “Oh! I bet I can do this. And you’d hear the cat meowing from all corners of the classroom, and that’s when I would know that they were ready to start learning about what they were going to do for the day. At some point I would start to hear a cat meowing - that’s one of the functions, a block that makes the cat meow. Kiki Prottsman: It’s very simple! When I used to teach second graders, I would sit them down in front of the program and just tell them to mess around. : How easy is it for folks to learn and to master Scratch? It’s very theatrical, which lends itself very well to this medium and to Star Wars. Each character or sprite has different costumes, and you put the script into each sprite, so that each sprite knows what to say at certain points. It has a very movie-like quality, where the background is called the stage, and you can set the stage with all sorts of different things. Its primary purpose was not even education necessarily, but giving kids and students the ability to make something happen by playing around without very much background knowledge. Scratch is really a novel programming language in that it was built for storytelling and self-expression, which is not true of many programming languages out there. It’s a first step, a program that shows you what’s possible, so that when you’re ready to start programming, you have already gotten experience with how statements combine and the types of things you can build. ![]() “How do I say this? How do I say that?” Everything is there for you and all you need to do is click it together into place. It has a toolbox that has all the blocks you could need and it allows you to drag blocks of code over into your work area and build programs without having to having to worry about syntax and grammar. You can either play with it directly on the Web, or download a copy to your machine if your Internet connection isn’t so reliable. Kiki Prottsman: Scratch is a program, free on the Web. : What is Scratch? How easy is it to learn and master? I think it really is geared toward the Star Wars fan as well as anybody who has that sci-fi blood running through their veins. Even with the cartoony pixelated characters and simple text, it still feels very approachable for all ages. I think Star Wars Coding Projects has a lot of lasting power as you go through into adulthood - there’s certainly something novel about it. ![]() The book is technically aimed for elementary schoolers. Several of these Scratch books by Jon Woodcock are targeted at that elementary/early middle school age range. One of the reasons that this particular book is already tugging at so many heartstrings is because people already have that embedded passion for Star Wars. But really, more so than many of the coding books out there, Star Wars Coding Projects is about combining passion with expression. Kiki Prottsman: As much as any coding book is about something, Star Wars Coding Projects is, on the surface, is about learning to code and learning those basic fundamental ideas. : What is Star Wars Coding Projects about? Jon Woodcock, it features six fully-illustrated Scratch projects, with step-by-step instructions. After checking out some of the fun games that can be built from the instructions in this book back at San Diego Comic-Con, called up Kiki Prottsman, education program manager at and writer of the foreword for Star Wars Coding Projects, to learn more about the book and why coding is important for everyone. Out this past October from DK Publishing, Star Wars Coding Projects combines Star Wars with the beginning coding language Scratch for creating fun projects, animations, and games. Using computers to solve problems or have fun is something a person in any galaxy can learn, and what better way to learn the basics of creating computer code than by being introduced through the fun of Star Wars. Not only are computers part of the everyday lives of the folks in a galaxy far, far away, computers became a fixture of everyday lives here on Earth around the same time as Star Wars, and both have permeated our society and culture.
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