Octopi
Diana Franklin, Charlotte Hill
Octopi is a new variant of Scratch that we are developing for use in
elementary education. It is designed for an approach of
guided exploration using scaffolded examples.
In other words, the instructor is able to use
anything in Scratch to provide rich starting points for the student. The
student is provided bounded exploration by being given a subset of the
Scratch blocks to implement a piece of the larger project.
There are two versions of the software.
-
OctopiDeveloper is used if you want to create new projects
for others to complete.. You can hide parts of the GUI so that
students do not get distracted by features they are not using. The
intent is also to build confidence by making students feel they have
mastered what they can see.
-
OctopiStudent is what students use to complete the projects
created with OctopiDeveloper. If you are using the KELP CS curriculum,
this is the version you should install on all of the computers in your
computer lab.
Installation instructions:
Mac - Download Octopi by clicking on the appropriate link to the
right. Unzip the folder and place it in the applications directory.
-
PC - Download and install
Scratch 1.4. Note your installation location. Then download octopi
by clicking on the link to the right. Go into the installation location
and copy in the media files and the image file. Move the Scratch.image
file to a different location. Rename the .exe and/or the image file so that
the image file and exe file have the same name, like Octopi.exe and Octopi.image.
The shortcut may not work - you may need to make a new shortcut.
The biggest challenge is getting Octopi to associate with octopi and scratch
files (.oct and .sb). If you are having trouble, first open Octopi, and
then open the project you want from within Octopi.
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. CNS-0940491 and CNS-1240985.
Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.