This project was intended to be a cleaned up version of Dust Buddy:
Vacuums are hard to draw. Sharks and fish make the game mechanics easy to understand, lowering overall cognitive load. (Students can of course apply whatever wild themes they want on top!)
Scratch limits cloud variables to accounts with verified emails + some other requirements that aren't entirely clear, so most students cannot use them.
Making the enemy start at a random location prevents the game from becoming unwinnable (if a previous game ended with the enemy in the top-left corner of the stage).
Adding a collectable makes the final game significantly more engaging!
I'm not sure whether Shark Attack would replace Dust Buddy, or if the projects are different enough to co-exist. However, whereas Dust Buddy is a Level 2 project, Shark Attack is intended to be a Level 1 project.
Shark Attack was made for my Chapin classes, where most of the students are only in first grade and needed more low-level projects to practice on before moving up. Shark Attack adds a lot of extra scaffolding to help them along.
For example, where Dust Buddy reads:
Step 2: Next, get this character to follow your mouse around.
The equivalent step in Shark Attack says:
Step 5, Follow the Mouse: When the flag is clicked, make your fish start following the mouse pointer forever.
In this instance, Shark Attack explicitly guides the student towards the "when flag clicked" and "forever" blocks. However, later steps in the project remove this scaffold:
Step 7, Watch the Fish: Make the shark point towards your moving fish.
So far, this strategy has been working with students!
Draft Untutorial: https://coding.space/launchpad/a84c695a-782b-44ce-87fc-17a59761e293 Scratch Project: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/774425351/
This project was intended to be a cleaned up version of Dust Buddy:
I'm not sure whether Shark Attack would replace Dust Buddy, or if the projects are different enough to co-exist. However, whereas Dust Buddy is a Level 2 project, Shark Attack is intended to be a Level 1 project.
Shark Attack was made for my Chapin classes, where most of the students are only in first grade and needed more low-level projects to practice on before moving up. Shark Attack adds a lot of extra scaffolding to help them along.
For example, where Dust Buddy reads:
The equivalent step in Shark Attack says:
In this instance, Shark Attack explicitly guides the student towards the "when flag clicked" and "forever" blocks. However, later steps in the project remove this scaffold:
So far, this strategy has been working with students!