Scratch Making Multimedia Stories + Books

Transcription

1 Scratch Making Multimedia Stories + Books Scratch allows you to make a variety of stories and books by adding text to pages. You can also add the normal animated sprites, music and sounds to make multimedia books. It is better to ask the pupils to concentrate on getting their pages finished and changing correctly before they try adding/animating sprites. 1. Adding Text to a background This is the easiest way of adding text as you add each piece of text to its page background and then change the pages in your Stage script. Ensure that you have the Stage icon selected (blue rectangle around it) so Scratch knows you want to choose/edit backgrounds. a. Adding Text to your own backgrounds: Click on the Backgrounds tab at the top of the centre section of the Scratch screen. Select Paint to paint your own background. This will open the Paint Editor where you can create your own backgrounds. Paint your background first and then add the text as the final stage. Clicking on the button will place a cursor on the screen. Holding the mouse arrow over the black square shows a hand icon allowing you to drag the cursor to the desired position on the screen and then type in your text. The text will flow onto a new line at the edge of the screen or pressing Return will force a new line. When you click on the text button, the area below the buttons changes to allow you to choose your favourite font and size. The colour of the text can be chosen / changed from the colour picker. You can only have one colour in each text block. Once you are happy with your background, click the OK button and it will be added as a new background beneath the plain white background. Scratch - Making Multimedia Stories + Books 1 Wrexham ICT Support Team

2 b. Adding Text to an Existing Background: Click on the Backgrounds tab at the top of the centre section of the Scratch screen. Click on the Import button and browse and select the background you want to use. When the new background appears in the list, click on the Edit button to put the background into the Paint Editor. (Or you can import directly into the Paint Editor by clicking on the Import button.) Enter your text as explained above. 2. Turning Your Pages You will need to write a script for the Stage to turn the pages with a delay to allow time to read your text. NOTE 1 To make the creation of your script easier, it is a good idea to rename the backgrounds with logical names such as Page1 etc. This can be done by clicking on the current name in the Backgrounds tab and it will be highlighted in blue. Type in the new name. The pages can be changed in your script using the switch to background.. block. Choose the background name from the dropdown menu. You will also have to put a wait? secs block after each switch to allow readers time to read the text. NOTE 2 You can also change the background name to a number only such as 01, 02, 03 etc. If you number your pages in the correct order, you can use the simpler next background block. This will work with numeric and alphabetic background names. I have used the switch to background? block first, to ensure the book starts on the first page. NOTE 3 If you want to re-order your pages in the Stage background tab, drag the thumbnail pictures to the required position. Make sure you do this BEFORE you rename the backgrounds or you will have to rename some of them again. Scratch - Making Multimedia Stories + Books 2 Wrexham ICT Support Team

3 3. Adding Text as a sprite NOTE The main problem with adding text as a sprite is that all sprites are normally visible on the stage from the beginning. You will need to write a script for each sprite hiding them until they are needed. It is much easier to place text on the relevant page backgrounds. Text can be added from the Paint a new sprite button. This opens the Paint Editor. Clicking of the text button will place a cursor on the screen. Holding the mouse arrow over the black square shows a hand icon cursor to the top left corner of the screen and then type in your text. allowing you to drag the When you click on the text button, the area below the buttons changes to allow you to choose your favourite font and size. The colour of the text can be chosen / changed from the colour picker. You can only have one colour in each text sprite. NOTE By default the Sprite Paint editor shows an area approximately 25% of the Scratch screen. If you want a piece of text which will be the width of the screen, you will have to drag the black square of text cursor to the left of the window. When your text reaches the right of the screen, you can drag the slider at the bottom of the Paint Editor to the right to show the remaining area. NOTE When you have dragged the slider, the text cursor is visible BUT will not allow you to type. Click back in your text and use the arrow keys to place it in the correct position to start typing again You cannot type text further than the right hand edge of the screen (the text wraps to a new line under the first one) but you can press the Return key to make 2 or more lines of text. Once your text sprite has been created, it will show as a thumbnail alongside your other sprites and be visible on the Stage. You will then need to write a script to show/hide the sprite(s) as required. Scratch - Making Multimedia Stories + Books 3 Wrexham ICT Support Team

4 4. Adding Text as Speech Bubbles Scratch allows you to add text as speech or thought bubbles coming from a sprite. There are 4 blocks that control how the speech/thought bubbles appear: This shows the text typed into the white box in a speech bubble for 2 secs. This shows the text typed into the white box in a speech bubble permanently. This shows the text typed into the white box in a thought bubble for 2 secs. This shows the text typed into the white box in a though bubble permanently. These blocks can be added anywhere in your scripts and allow you to hold conversations between sprites, have one sprite as the story narrator, tell jokes or give information. Clicking in the white box containing the text Hello! or Hmm will select the text and allow you to type in your own words. It is better to use the blocks which show the text for a set time in seconds. You can type in your own number for the time delay. If you use the blocks without the for? secs, the text bubble stays on screen permanently, although a new speech or thought bubble will replace the one on screen. Scratch - Making Multimedia Stories + Books 4 Wrexham ICT Support Team

5 6. Adding Sounds NOTE The sounds can be imported sounds/music samples that come with the program, loaded from your hard drive/server, or recorded sounds/narrations, recorded with Scratch s built in sound recorder. These sounds can be run from the Stage script. Clicking on the Sounds tab at the top of the Stage scripting area in the centre of the screen will show the Record and Import buttons. Clicking on the Record button will show the sound recorder where you can record sounds and narrations. You will be asked to type in a name for each recording which the software will then list in the play sound blocks drop-down menu. Clicking on the Import button will show a browsing window where you can browse for sounds. To play these sounds, you will need to add a play sound or play sound? until done block after the switch background block so that the sound will play after the page has opened. 7. Adding/Animating Sprites Once your book is complete and the pages change as you want them to, you can add sprites and animate them. You will have to write scripts for your sprites to hide/show them so that they appear at the correct time and on the correct page. This can be done by using the hide, show and wait? secs blocks to synchronise with your pages. Scratch - Making Multimedia Stories + Books 5 Wrexham ICT Support Team

6 Some useful scripting blocks for making books: Block Function The Green Flag Header this starts all scripts at the same time. You will need to add wait blocks to your scripts to ensure that things happen at the correct time. Switches the background (page). You need to select which background with the drop-down arrow from a list of backgrounds in your project. Have your paged named sensibly. Switches to the next background (page). Works best if the background names are changed to numbers, letters or in alphabetical order. Plays a sound from the Sound Library or a recorded sound such as a narration. This block moves on to the next block immediately, so the sound/narration may continue after the page has turned. As play sound but halts the script (and the turning of pages) until the sound ends. This is better if you have lengthy narrations. For more advanced users Control block and Sensing insert This block and insert can be used to give more control over the page turning. The script will stop at this block and wait for the reader of your book to press the Space Bar (or any other key you choose from the drop-down arrow list). You MUST add an instruction on the first page to tell the reader which key to press to turn the page. This block is used to send a signal (a word you choose) to the software to start a script (or a number of scripts) at the correct time. You need to use the when I receive? header to start your sprite s script(s). This header will not start the script below it, until it receives the signal (word) sent by the broadcast block. Although a little more complicated, you must use the broadcast and receive blocks when you use the block, because you don t know how long the reader of your book will wait before turning the page. Scratch - Making Multimedia Stories + Books 6 Wrexham ICT Support Team

7 For More Advanced Users Adding Scrolling Text For those who wish to add something extra to their stories, it is possible to have text scrolling on and off the screen. Obviously, this is more complicated than adding text in other ways as it involves some more advanced scripts. Text can be made to scroll horizontally or vertically. a. Horizontal Scrolling text It is easier for the readers of your story if you keep horizontal scrolling text to ONE line. If you want lots of text on your page, add it to the background as explained in section 1. The text must be created as a sprite. Click on the Paint New Sprite button to open the paint editor Click on the text button to add text and select the font, size and colour you want. Type your text into the Paint Editor. Dragging the black square of the text cursor to the left will scroll the window to the left edge of the Paint Editor. This will allow you to type in a longer sentence. The text will scroll to a new line when it reaches the right hand edge of the Paint Editor and you will have to drag the scroll bar at the bottom of the Paint Editor window to see the new line. When you have finished typing, click on the OK button and the text will appear on the stage. You will now need to create a script to make the text scroll slowly onto the page. This sample script makes the text scroll from right to left so readers can start reading the first few words of your sentence as soon as it appears. Show makes the text appear, go to places the text to the far right of the stage, repeat 400 repeats the move -2 (move to the left), the tiny steps makes the text move slowly. Finally, the hide block hides the text as it reaches the far left of the screen. You may have to change some of the figures in the white boxes to get you text scrolling in the way you want it to. Remember, you could change the move figure to 1.5 or 1 to slow down the scrolling. Scratch - Making Multimedia Stories + Books 7 Wrexham ICT Support Team

8 b. Vertical Scrolling Text Vertical scrolling text should be designed as multiple line sprites with only 2 or 3 words on each line to make it easier for the readers of your stories. The text must be created as a sprite. Click on the Paint New Sprite button to open the paint editor Click on the text button you want. to add text and select the font, size and colour Drag the black square of the text cursor to the top of the Paint Editor and type your text into the Paint Editor pressing the Return key every 2 or 3 words to make a column of text. This is the best form for vertical scrolling text as it only gives the reader of your story 2 or 3 words to read on each line as the lines appear, You will now need to create a script to make the text scroll slowly onto the page. This sample script makes the text scroll from bottom to top so readers can start reading the first few words of your sentence as soon as it appears. Show makes the text appear, go to places the text to the centre and well below the stage, repeat 275 repeats the change y by 2 (move up the screen), the tiny steps makes the text move slowly. Finally, the hide block hides the text as it reaches the top of the screen. You may have to change some of the figures in the white boxes to get you text scrolling in the way you want it to. Remember, you could change the change y by figure to 1.5 or 1 to slow down the scrolling. NOTE With both of the scrolling texts and sprite text, you will need to think very carefully about the timing of your texts /page turning. Scratch - Making Multimedia Stories + Books 8 Wrexham ICT Support Team