Module 8 - The “Multimedia Christmas Card” Project

These materials have been developed by OśrodekEdukacjiInformatycznejiZastosowańKomputerów (Centre for Information Technology Education and Application of Computers) in Warsaw as part of the “MistrzowieKodowania” ("Coding Masters”) Programme funded by Samsung Electronics Polska, licensed under CC-BY-SA “Attribution – Share Alike 3.0 Poland”

Information

Objectives

General objectives:

• Review and revision of previously presented Scratch commands and language structures;
• Development of a multimedia Christmas card scenario;
• Its implementation in the Scratch environment.

Specific objectives:

• The student will understand and be able to use appropriate structural instructions.
• The student will be able to use the message mechanism and program responses to events.
• The student will understand the concepts of global and local variables and will be able to use then in the programme.
• The student will be able to design and implement a multimedia Scratch animation in which many stages and animated sprites are used.

Stages

Discussion of solutions of module VII additional tasks

Time to complete this part: about 10 minutes

At the beginning of the lesson we remind students what they were supposed to prepare between classes. We invite a volunteer to present his/her solution. We ask if anyone had a different way of finding a solution. We discuss the solutions (praising correct solutions to individual tasks).

If there was no homework, we start by repeating key issues from the previous module. We also ask if students have any doubts regarding their own projects. If anyone wants to show something he/she is proud of, we let him/her do it.

Introduction

Time to complete this part: about 15 minutes

We explain that this last lesson will be different than the previous ones. We propose to split students into groups of 2–3 people. We say that each team will design its own multimedia Christmas card.

We discuss what functionalities the card should have(animation, sounds), talk about how probably it will make use of animated sprites and more than one stage. We point out that we can develop graphics ourselves, we can also take advantage of Internet resources and search for appropriate images. The same goes for sounds – we can compos them with the use of blocks of the Sound category, record our own greetings or a Christmas carol, or play an audio file of a carol.

Developing card scenarios by the students

Time to complete this part: about 20 minutes

Task: We ask the students to start planning their scenarios. We write down the plan on pieces of paper or in a word processor. When the students are creating their scenarios we give advice and check to make sure the adopted plans neither go beyond their programming capabilities nor are too simple (e.g. do not require any programming at all).We also remind them, depending on the needs, e.g. how to handle messages, variable or randomness.

If we have more time, or if students find the task difficult, in this part we can present a sample card scenario and its implementation (two examples are provided further in this module).

Implementing cards by the students

Time to complete this part: about 35 to 40 minutes (in the classroom)

This part may be carried out in two variants, during the same lesson or at home. During the implementation in the classroom we check students’ progress on an ongoing basis and help them if necessary. If the cards are implemented at home, we tell students that during the second part of the class there will still be time for corrections and modifications, questions and obtaining help from the teacher. At the beginning of the second meeting we ask students what they managed to do and what they failed to achieve, and what problems they encountered. We help, explain the resulting difficulties, and provide time for the students to refine their projects.

Presentation of cards by student teams

Time to complete this part: about 5–10 minutes

We ask individual teams to present their work on the interactive whiteboard or using the projector.

Add-ons:

Sample scenario I:“Santa Claus Falls Down the Chimney”

In this scenario, we use ready-made drawings. They have been developed specifically for the “Masters of Coding” programme and can be used in students’ projects. The source of the Christmas tree picture from the last scene is the openclipart.org website offering free graphics. To find Christmas trees it is enough to type Christmas tree in the website’s search box.

Scene 1 A house in winter scenery, with a chimney on the roof.

Scene 2 After a specified time, e.g. 1 second, the chimney is zoomed in on. Santa Claus comes flying with a bag of presents and falls down the chimney.

Scene 3 A room with a fireplace. Santa Claus comes out of the fireplace with a bag of presents.

Scene 4 Christmas greetings. Christmas tree and greetings (“Merry Christmas from the Masters of Coding”).

The animated Santa Claus falling down the chimney and coming out of the fireplace into the room will be sprites with multiple costumes. Preparing the card we load the first three scenes into a Scratch project (files dom.png, komin.png, pokoj.png, respectively), we prepare the fourth – a Christmas tree and the words of the greetings – in an image editor (sample file zyczenia.png. We create two sprites, load appropriate files as costumes (for Santa Claus falling down the chimney these files are do_komina1.png, ..., do_komina9.png, and for Santa Claus entering the room the files z_komina01.png, ..., z_komina12.png).