We are looking for easy to follow tutorials on the basics of Scratch for our ICT Pathways course. This section of the course will introduce students to Programming. We plan to introduce Scratch as the first programming language to introduce programming concepts. Has Scratch formally created tutorials to be used at the high school level for an introduction to programming preview? If there are other home made Introduction to Scratch videos to be used at the high school level that would be a great introduction to programming. Thanks in advance for your ideas!

Peace
Shawn

Not as far as I know. Maybe check out the Scratch Wiki?

Scratch isn't really suitable for high schoolers because of its restraints and lack of intuitive programming constructs. The best thing for teaching high schoolers programming in my opinion is Snap!, which is Scratch plus a lot of constructs from languages like Scheme and Python that make it more intuitive and intelligent to program.

Use this along with Beauty and Joy of Computing and you're set.

https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/4455/ (Snap! User Discussion - for the average user or instructor)
https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/4464/ (Snap! Development Topic - for technical stuff)

shawncampbell wrote:

We are looking for easy to follow tutorials on the basics of Scratch for our ICT Pathways course. This section of the course will introduce students to Programming. We plan to introduce Scratch as the first programming language to introduce programming concepts. Has Scratch formally created tutorials to be used at the high school level for an introduction to programming preview? If there are other home made Introduction to Scratch videos to be used at the high school level that would be a great introduction to programming. Thanks in advance for your ideas!

Peace
Shawn

Excellent idea! Go to the Scratch site for teachers for more info.

birdoftheday wrote:

Scratch isn't really suitable for high schoolers because of its restraints and lack of intuitive programming constructs. The best thing for teaching high schoolers programming in my opinion is Snap!, which is Scratch plus a lot of constructs from languages like Scheme and Python that make it more intuitive and intelligent to program.

Use this along with Beauty and Joy of Computing and you're set.

https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/4455/ (Snap! User Discussion - for the average user or instructor)
https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/4464/ (Snap! Development Topic - for technical stuff)

I disagree; I think that a lot of high schoolers write off programming as ‘way too complicated’ for them to learn, and Scratch would be a great introduction to a programming mindset, too. Not to mention it has results a little more satisfying than ‘Hello world’ printed in the terminal can be. I think a lot of high schoolers would really enjoy making their own games and animations with it. Plus, Harvard starts off their intro to programming course with learning Scratch.

Back to the original question, there is a book called Scratch Programming for Teens (that edition covers 2.0 and there's older ones that cover 1.4), and then edX offers several free online courses you can take on Scratch, which just by the nature of edX I would imagine fits the age group pretty well. Note that with edX you can still access the course material even if it's archived- you just miss out on grading and getting a certificate. Harvard's CS50 (the course I was talking about earlier) is on edX, and is current so you can still get the grading. CS50 delves deeper into programming, so if you want to teach programming and computer science in general, that's a great course to go with. It has great reviews.

Hope this helps!

Hi Shawn,

Have you checked out the ScratchED yet? The ScratchED site is more geared towards teachers in mind and has resources that you might find helpful.