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Scratch in the Code Builder

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6 comments

  • Bryan Sanders
    Bug Zapper Beacon of Knowledge Super Star Moderator

    What does Scratch have that MakeCode and Python don’t?

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  • Arnav

    There are many different things, but I believe that there are many people(like me) who are familiar with scratch. Also I think the coding interface it much easier to handle.

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  • Moderator Beacon of Knowledge Super Star

    Hi, Arnav - I'm glad to hear that you love coding! Scratch is a fun introduction to coding, and I have used it in my classes in the past. There are differences between using Scratch and using Minecraft:EE for teaching and enjoying coding. This would include things like:

    Scratch : the scratch interface allows you to see its "world" (the display screen) while you choose elements to add, and you can add code for many elements. For example, you might add a cat, and add code to have the cat move up and down. You might have a background, and have the background change from woods to ocean.

    Minecraft: In a way that is similar to Scratch, you can code the agent to move up and down, or having the weather change from rain to snow, or time from day to night. However, Minecraft is a completely different experience. Rather than creating code to execute on a two dimensional screen, code is created to come alive in a 3-d world in which your player can walk around and take pictures, and interact with the code you create.

    You can virtually step inside of a house you built. You can swim in an aquarium, you can fly through the sky and drop salmon into a river.

    Of course, you can do some of these things in a side-scroller way in Scratch. It just isn't anything that would embed itself into Minecraft in a purposeful way. Scratch is super. I hope you will also consider a coding experience in Minecraft:EE. Let us know if we can help! It's a blast!

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  • Laylah Bulman

    @arnav I love Scratch, as well! I recently spoke with a teacher from Massachusetts who used “Cybercraft: Home Sweet Hmm” to teach the concept of conditionals and then used Scratch to have her students build a game, based on conditionals and online safety. So cool!
    Many players find the Scratch interface easy and there are great ways to use them both.
    @debbie Great comments! I’d love to imagine what an integration looked like and all the things that might be done with Scratch that we can’t do now!

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  • Actually, Scratch was one of the coding tools included when Code Connection was first introduced in M:EE. It was a ScratchX extension that is sadly no longer supported. It was great!

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  • Moderator Beacon of Knowledge Super Star

    Thanks everyone! I learn so much. Cathy Cheo-Isaacs - was it like a link to the Scratch online interface, or an actual part of the code of MC:EE? Really interesting! If we had Scratch or Scratch - like stuff, we could connect Micro:bits. (My secret-not-so-secret dream is an actual agent we can code irl) So we could either have a Micro:bit panel on the front of the agent (a la Kitronics) or code the agent itself (a la Lego robotics.) Way out there, but these are the things dreams are made of...

    In a simpler dream, if I had a simple Scratch interface in MC:EE, I can imagine:

    • exporting Scratch game screens to display in my MC world
    • having an agent sprite in my Scratch world
    • importing MC screenshots to use as a Scratch background
    • having a wizard NPC that launches Scratch

    Of course, since the recent update allows links to be added to the game, a link to https://scratch.mit.edu/ can be included in the game. So the real question is; what would you do with the connection between the two?

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