Education in today’s knowledge societyPractice 6: Constructivist software

Scratch is a program that is very useful to make games and cartoons for children. You can use it to illustrate ideas about physic and dynamic for example.

You have to play with the instructions given and combine it to make the character chosen move. There are eight categories of actions:

To make the cat walkI have to choose these actions:

This could be good for a race by different characters, I can put an scenery and another animal.

Have to press there to choose scenery.

A BOUNCING BALL

I have to change my character for a ball instead of a cat, following the instructions we’ll try to make the ball bounce.

This way, you’ll get a ball bouncing from a way to another in the screen.

Giving other instructions, as painting and as bouncing in other directions, we can get a ball bouncing and drawing lines as fast as we want.

Can also draw geometric forms:

There are many simulators that acts as this program with many complex codes that allows you to make many things, here there are some examples:

http://phet.colorado.edu/en/simulation/eating-and-exercise

http://www.realrailway.com/en/sotetsu/simulator.html