So you want to learn how to code? We've got some badges to help you along.
You earn badges by completing tasks. Each badge has you learning - like doing an online course, or coding something new.
Start earning badges today:
Here are the different areas:
The Code.org website is a good place to start if you want to learn coding. Get this badge by completing the 'Hour of Code' intro course.
Get this badge by creating a 'Flappy Bird' game on the Code.org website. Here's an example one.
So you earned two badges. Nice! What next?
Scratch is a nice programming language for learning how to code. You can create stories, games and animations by 'dragging and dropping' instructions together. Get this badge by creating your first Scratch project.
Scratch let's you take existing projects, and remix them as you want to create your own project. Get this badge by remixing a project.
So you earned four badges. Nice! What next?
Twine is an online tool for writing 'Choose Your Own Adventure' stories. You can write a story with different paths and endings, and the reader then chooses which path to take through the story.
Twine is easy to use once you know how. You write a page of text (as short as you want), and can add links to other pages. So your story is a few pages with links between them, and the reader chooses their path through the story by the links they click on.
We'll now write our first story in Twine:
On the "Start" page, copy this:
You bought a lottery ticket at the local shop - a chance to win ten million pounds!
It's 6pm on Saturday night, and the winning lottery number is announced on TV:
- [[You won! Your number matches|you-win]]
- [[You lost. Boo|you-lose]]
On the "you-win" page, copy this:
You live a life of luxury - a fancy house and car, no need to work, anything you want.
But you sometimes wonder - would you have been happier if you hadn't won?
The End.
On the "you-lose" page, copy this:
You live a normal life - a normal house and car, a job, and you never buy another ticket.
But you sometimes wonder - how would your life have been if you had won?
The End.
To play through the story, click the "Start" page, and click 'Test from Here'. Now show a mentor!
So you know how to use Twine a bit. Time to write a longer Choose Your Own Adventure story, called "The Magical Wardrobe". To start you off, this is the first page:
You and your Mum and Dad moved into the new house this morning. It's nice. Your first night in your new bedroom. You wake at 3am to a strange noise: a ringing coming from the attic. You quietly creep up into the attic, and find the ringing is coming from a big old wardrobe in the corner. You: * Panic, run down to your bedroom and hide under the covers. * Open the wardrobe. Let's get this adventure started. * Go wake up your Mum and Dad. They need to know.
Each choice is a link to another page, where the story continues. So what happens when you open the wardrobe? Ask a mentor to play your adventure once it's done.
So you've written two stories with Twine so far. Now for a challenge: make your own Choose Your Own Adventure story about anything you want. Make it fun and interesting!
Twine can do much more than text pages and links between them: you can change colours, and add pictures and music. Here are two guides to help you:
Show a mentor what you wrote!
So you earned three badges. Nice! What next? Try our story challenges!
Neocities.org lets you create your own free website on the Internet! Get this badge by creating your first website at Neocities.
So you've got a website. You need to make it cooler. Maybe make a webpage purple, or have words in crazy sizes. Learn how by taking the online course at Khan Academy called 'Intro to HTML/CSS: Making webpages'.
So you know a bit about making webpages. Now for a challenge. Make a website game about a haunted house. Each webpage is a room in the house, and describes the spookiness happening in the room. The links on a room’s webpage take the player to other rooms nearby.
The player starts outside the haunted house (on the website’s main page). They then choose which links to follow to take them though the haunted house, and out the back door!
Make all the webpages awesome. Use different colours, put words in different sizes, have pictures (draw some), and maybe some videos (link to them).
Get a badge by having a mentor play through your Haunted House website. Bonus points if they get a fright!
So you earned three badges. Nice! What next?
You can use Scratch to make cool games that look professional. Follow along with two YouTube videos to make an "endless runner" type game, where a t-rex jumps over cactuses. There's a Scratch starter project you can remix to get the game sprites:
Show your finished game to a mentor.
If you want to make more Scratch games, here's a useful YouTube playlist that shows how to make a 'cat chasing mouse' game, a 'whack a mole' game, and more.
Microsoft Arcade is like Scratch for games: you code by snapping blocks together, but it knows about game stuff like sprite animations and high scores.
Get this badge by completing the Beginner's Guide to Arcade Games skillmap, which starts you off coding games in Microsoft Arcade.
Show a mentor when you're done - you'll want to have an account with Microsoft Arcade, to save your progress.
After that, you can start making your own games. If you check out the Microsoft Arcade main page, there are also other skillmaps you can do to learn more.
Unity is a proper games engine used to make real games.
Unity can be pretty tricky to use, but CodeClub have a tutorial for getting started with it: Introduction to Unity: 3D Objects, Character Controllers, Colliders, Text and Buttons.
Here's what they say about it: "In this introduction to Unity you will learn how to make 3D worlds and games with collectibles, timers and non-player characters."
Get this badge by completing the tutorial - it may take a while. Good luck!
Show a mentor as you make progress.
The Code Combat website is great for learning how to code in real programming languages, whilst playing though an adventure! Get this badge by completing the first 'Kithgard Dungeon' campaign in Javascript. You'll learn about syntax, methods, parameters, strings, loops and variables.
Get this badge by completing the second 'Backwoods Forest' Code Combat campaign in Javascript. You'll learn about if/else, relational operators, object properties and input handling.
Get this badge by completing the third 'Sarven Desert' Code Combat campaign in Javascript. You'll learn about arithmetic, counters, while-loops, break, arrays, string comparison and finding min/max.
Get this badge by completing the fourth 'Cloudrip Mountain' Code Combat campaign in Javascript. You'll learn about object literals, remote method invocation, for-loops, functions, drawing and modulo.
So you earned four badges. Nice! What next?
So you're working on your own project at home? That's awesome! Show the project off to everyone at the dojo - and we'll give you a badge!
So you want to learn more? Well, there's a lot of coding resources on the internet. Try some of these: