make your own game

Great Place where you can make your own professional looking Board game!

https://www.thegamecrafter.com/

Using Scratch to make an image with a transparent background

One of the things I love about Scratch is the built in image editing abilities. I find that for many simple tasks Scratch works just as well as more sophisticated programs like Photoshop. One use that I find I often use it for is for deleting the background from an image so that it has a transparent background. Here is how it is done:

 

   Click on the File folder in the sprite area to upload the file you want to edit.

 

Choose the costumes tab in the work area to Edit the image.

Select the paint bucket tool  and the slash (nothingness) colour

 

Click 3 or 4 times quickly in the exact same spot somewhere in the background. Everything that is the same colour (or close to the same colour) will be deleted. You may need to touch up with the eraser tool.

 

To Save the file right click on the costume icon an chose “save to local file”. You can now use the image in any other program you wish!

 

 

 

Lesson Task Files

A number of people have requested that I share the "Tasks" for each lesson, so here they are!

Task 1: Moving Left right (simple)
Task 2: All directions
Task 3: Conditions
Task 4: Smooth Move (Moving Left right with Conditions)
Task 5: Gravity and Velocity
Task 6: Jumping and Barriers
Task 7: Levels

Tech Woes

The grade sevens had a bit of a bumpy start in the new year. A large number of them forgot their passwords over the holidays so they were unable to log in. We have discovered a bit of a hick-up with the password reset process. It seems that the verification emails and password reset emails are not making it to the student emails. I wonder if the issue is with some kind of blocking through the district. The teacher account sound like it could be a good solution but three teachers in the district have tried signing up, both with school district emails and with gmail accounts and none of us have received a verification email yet. My guess is that you need to use a school district email in order to verify that you are a teacher, but that the district is somehow blocking emails from scratch.

In the meantime, students are going to use the offline editor or use the online one without logging in by uploading and downloading files. This will work with the SetBC laptops, but not with the Ncomputing lab because it will not let you download files from the web (so frustrating!) It's a bit cumbersome and time consuming but it's the only option we have for the moment. The inability to verify emails is also making it not possible for students to "share" their project online, even if they did remember their passwords.