This book contains twenty four short projects in eBook or spiral-bound print format for children 8 – 12 years.
They are grouped into pairs by colour to cover 12 Sessions. Each is a draw and code assignment in Scratch
to foster creative thinking with graphical skills. Scratch +Ready-Steady-Code connects essential coding
concepts with children’s imaginations for them to create games, animations and stories almost without limitations.
Seamus O’Neill’s Ready-Steady-Code is all about the extra magic, creativity and fun that vector sprites and
fine-line grids bring to Scratch. More than 85% of Scratch sprites are vectors. Only 15% are bitmaps. Vector
sprites are graphical drawings consisting of lines and shapes with colour fills. Bitmaps consist of difficult pixels.
Vectors are much more flexible and easier to use. They can be ungrouped into their basic shapes which you
can easily manipulate, re-colour and re-shape into new sprites or new costumes. You can also draw your own
sprites (when the sprite you need is not available in the library). The term ‘paint’ is used for bitmaps but ‘draw’
is more suitable for vectors. This book shows children how to turn a bug into a spider, a butterfly into a bee,
a skating penguin into a musician and much more. The vector toolbox is shown down along the right hand
side when you open the Paint Editor in Vector Mode. This is because the cat sprite is a vector image. If you’re
working on a bitmap image, you find the bitmap tools down along the left side.
SCRATCH +Ready-Steady-Code empowers the adults to take up the challenge
that comes with being a parent, mentor or educator of children in this age of
technology. The cards address the adult’s confidence and competence while
also facilitating children to learn coding and graphical drawing at the same
time. OK! Are you Ready? Are you Steady? Let’s Code!
