Scratch + Ready-Steady-Code: Flip Card Projects For 8-12 Year Olds

By Seamus O'Neill

This book contains twenty four short projects in eBook or spiral-bound print format for children 8 - 12 years.
They are grouped into pairs by colour to cover 12 Sessions. Each is a draw and code assignment in Scratch
to foster creative thinking with graphical skills. Scratch +Ready-Steady-Code connects essential coding
concepts with children’s imaginations for them to create games, animations and stories almost without limitations.
Seamus O’Neill’s Ready-Steady-Code is all about the extra magic, creativity and fun that vector sprites and
fine-line grids bring to Scratch. More than 85% of Scratch sprites are vectors. Only 15% are bitmaps. Vector
sprites are graphical drawings consisting of lines and shapes with colour fills. Bitmaps consist of difficult pixels.
Vectors are much more flexible and easier to use. They can be ungrouped into their basic shapes which you
can easily manipulate, re-colour and re-shape into new sprites or new costumes. You can also draw your own
sprites (when the sprite you need is not available in the library). The term ‘paint’ is used for bitmaps but ‘draw’
is more suitable for vectors. This book shows children how to turn a bug into a spider, a butterfly into a bee,
a skating penguin into a musician and much more. The vector toolbox is shown down along the right hand
side when you open the Paint Editor in Vector Mode. This is because the cat sprite is a vector image. If you’re
working on a bitmap image, you find the bitmap tools down along the left side.
SCRATCH +Ready-Steady-Code empowers the adults to take up the challenge
that comes with being a parent, mentor or educator of children in this age of
technology. The cards address the adult’s confidence and competence while
also facilitating children to learn coding and graphical drawing at the same
time. OK! Are you Ready? Are you Steady? Let’s Code!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Seamus O'Neill
• Release date: Oct 6, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463153123

Seamus O'Neill

About the Author – Seamus O’Neill (Over 50 years in education): Seamus O’Neill has been an imaginative primary teacher during his long professional career. From before and since he left classroom teaching he has been in demand for curriculum-based CPD in Art, Maths and Scratch coding. CoderDojo Pioneer: Seamus is a pioneer, volunteer and entrepeneur. He set up one of the first Irish CoderDojos, in Navan over 6 years ago. He believes code at school should be (and can be) just as much fun and exciting for girls and boys at school as it is in CoderDojo – a non-school activity which attracts far less girls than boys. Maths & Coding Research: He co-authored the ‘Mathemagic’ and ‘Mata Draíochta‘ text books which has been the most popular primary maths text series in Ireland, used in almost 80% of primary schools. Most recently (2017) the developers of SCRATCH, the MIT Media Lab (Boston) contacted Seamus to add his Ready-Steady-Code component into the world’s top children’s programming language. Scratch has over 32 million users, and the Ready-Steady-Code vector grids have improved Scratch for children and teachers worldwide. Since then he published his book ‘SCRATCH with Ready-Steady-Code’ and children’s Flip-books and support resources (e.g. Magnetic Scratch, Staff-room Mugs in Irish and English) to simplify and add fun to learning Maths with Code at school for all teachers who teach Maths Maths & Environment Resources: When Mathemagic was introduced, the Departments of Education and of the Environment (as well several County Councils) engaged him to run a project that supported both Maths teaching and Environmental good practice. This project was also supported by Kelloggs and TetraPak.

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