Game Jams
Weekly game jams such as the one held over at WeeklyGameJam are a great way of getting inspired and experimenting with new game design ideas. It’s also a great way to meet and interact with a community of people who share the same passion for games and coding as you do.
I decided to take my own advice this time and took part in the Can’t Touch It! theme where you have to build a game within a week that fits with the week’s chosen topic. After brainstorming a couple of ideas I got to work building a prototype in Scratch, then I worked on polishing it once I was happy the game mechanics were working. I’ve seen the most fantastic games that were built within a day, mine titled Circles was built in two days. I’ve detailed the process I followed over on my personal blog here.
The idea of the game is to continuously contain the smaller moving circle with the ever decreasing perimeter.
PLAY THE GAME HERE
Amazing Competitions
We’re running our competitions again! If you’re in one of the schools that hosts a First Coding computer club, be on the look out for our competition. Over the next couple of weeks pupils will have to code a maze solving (virtual) robot with the fastest times winning some fab prizes.
Free to enter and open to all pupils whether they’ve previously taken part in the clubs or not.
Asteroids!
It’s been another fun day training a young team of coders in the art of making the classic game of Asteroids. I loved seeing all the different ideas for their games, especially the war, food and animal themed versions. Please keep working on your great games over the Easter holidays and if you get stuck, please just drop me a line.
Happy Hens
After learning that one of our young pupils recently bought some chickens for her garden, we set about designing a web page to advertise the eggs she was going to sell. The nice thing about Scratch 3 is that you can embed your projects really easily and this is exactly what we did here.
By designing an interactive Scratch project to introduce everyone to her new pets, Elsie was able to embed it into her website. You can see the finished result here.
Covert Scratch Projects into Android Apps
As well as converting Scratch projects into standalone programs (see previous post), did you know that you can also take any Scratch project and turn it into an app for Android? We’ve written an easy to follow guide that walks you through the process of producing standalone executables and Android apps and it’s available via our subscription package.
The video below is of the rotating globe that was built in Scratch and was used to advertise one of the retro gaming workshops earlier this year. This Scratch project was packaged up as an app and installed on various Android devices to demonstrate what could be done.
Who’s Talking About Scratch 3?
Whilst trying out Scratch 3, pupils have been giving their chatbots a voice. The responses are random to give the chatbots a bit of character. We’re going to look at ways to incorporate the Microbit next.
Online Teaching Resources
First Coding is very happy to reveal that after a summer of hard work our teaching resources are now online and available. Our resource packs are a subscription based online resource for primary and secondary school teachers as well as parents to aid in the teaching of computing within schools and the home. Not only does it provide teachers with classroom handouts, working project examples and PowerPoint presentations but subscribers have access to a monthly podcast of ideas for setting up coding clubs as well as a support forum and video seminars to help deliver great lessons.
