1. What is Computer Science?

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Hello, and welcome to CS First Storytelling.

In today's activity, you will tell the story of a character who is walking through a scene and reacting to the objects he sees.

Sometimes, this means experimenting, and testing different options until the program runs exactly how you want it to.

So today, you'll also work with testing to improve your program.

Believe it or not, both storytellers and computer scientists use sequencing and testing in their work.

Take a look at the process an author goes through to write a story.

They begin by pre-writing, or creating a plan for the story.

This allows the writer to carefully sequence elements and decide what elements to include in the story.

They then begin writing, which as you probably noticed from your own writing, often includes a lot of revisions and reworking of ideas until they're just right.

Finally, the author gets feedback from another person, an editor, and incorporates that feedback into their story.

Well when computer scientists create a program, they go through a very similar process.

Here's one example of a process that you, or any other computer scientist, might go through to create a computer program.

First, the computer scientist thinks about the goals of the program.

What should this program do when it's complete?

Next comes the initial planning, which is like pre-writing in storytelling.

At this stage, the computer scientists plans the features and functionality of the program.

The computer scientists then starts to code, or implement their plans into a program.

Just like writing the first draft of a story.

The code then undergoes testing.

When many different people try it out, edit it, and revise it.

This process continues until the program successfully accomplishes the goals the computer scientist set out to achieve.

When writers and computer scientists work together to build a computer animated movie, you can imagine that there is a lot of sequencing, testing, and revising happening at every stage of the writing and programming processes.

In today's activity, you'll begin with a starter project that already contains some programming code to help you start your story.

The starter code makes your main character move up and down like it's walking.

And it lets you add other objects to your story for your main character to react to.

First, take a look at the story options, and choose the one you will use.

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After this video is over, click the starter project link to the right of this video that matches your selection.

Videos will use the pet store starter project as an example, but you will build your story in the starter project you choose.

The starter project link will open Scratch in a new tab.

Sign in to Scratch with your username and password you wrote in you CS First club passport.

It is important to sign in to Scratch, so that you can access all of your creations later.

Then, click the remix button in Scratch to make a copy of the starter project.

If you are not signed in, you won't receive a digital badge for completing this activity.

So, be sure to sign in.

Next, click the CS First tab at the top of your browser to return to this page.

Click the green next arrow to move on to the next video, which will teach you how to start your story.

Now it's your turn.

Choose a story starter, and click the starter project link of your choice.

Sign in to Scratch with the username and password you wrote in your CS First club passport.

Click the remix button in Scratch to make a copy of the starter project.

Then, return to this tab to watch the next video.

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