After a very full June with lots of events and a trip to the ISTE conference in Denver, I am basically home for the rest of the summer with just one vacation week planned. There is plenty to do: gardening, bike riding, pool floating top the list of R&R activities.

But, I also want to be able to spend time on my own areas of interest and that includes coding. I’ve been dabbling in Python on the Pi and for the last two days, getting into Scratch using a couple books I found on Amazon, both from DK publishers. The Coding With Scratch Workbook is short and features four games that use what I would consider advanced features. I made them and in several cases did some remixing of the code provided. I’m now working through Coding Games in Scratch. It takes a similar visual approach and includes a “hacks and tweaks” section in each chapter with ideas for going further. I’m also thinking that I might try to write the code from the description of the game and then dive into the chapter when I get stuck.

There is also a whole community of Scratch educators out there at the ScratchED site from Harvard. Twitter led me to the Creative Computing Guide that Dylan Ryder has remixed. I’m looking forward to spending some time with the old and new guide.

If you’re looking for inspiration, here’s my Scratch studio.