A Scratch alternative for high school

Scratch is free for everyone, and its blocks drag and snap together; its foundation calls it the world's largest creative learning community for kids. A high school student who has made things in Scratch is ready for what comes next: rules they can also read and write as text, characters of their own built in 3D, animation done the way animators do it, and work that carries on into the tools professionals use. Jabbertoon does that in the browser, on a Chromebook too, free, with no download and no account.

The same ideas, a step further

Everything a student learned in Scratch is here under plain names: a rule starts with WHEN (the game starts, a key is pressed, one thing touches another, a number reaches 0) and goes on with what to DO; the game keeps numbers and lists; a student makes blocks of their own, which are given values to work with; if, repeat, forever and wait until work as they do in Scratch. Make a game without code walks through all of it.

The step further is the text. In 🎮 Game, 📝 Steps shows the whole game as the list of steps that made it, written as text, one for every button pressed. A student can read it, copy it to make the game again, or type more steps and press Take these steps. They are the same steps an AI assistant writes, so the blocks and the text are one program.

Characters of their own, in 3D

In the Forge, a student builds a character or a thing from parts in 3D: grown off one another, shaped, coloured and made of a material. A character they build joins their cartoon straight away, where it walks, talks and does moves, and it can be what they fly in a game with depth.

Animation, the way animators do it

• Moves from blocks: a move is blocks with the numbers on them, so changing one number changes the move. The 12 principles of animation show each principle in a move, with one number to change, and how professionals do the same in Blender.
• Follow-through on its own: ears, tails and hanging parts swing on springs when a character walks, hops or stops.
• Lip sync: a character talks in a free voice made on the device, or in the student's own recorded voice, and its mouth takes the shapes of the words where the voice says them.
• The camera: a shot holds close on one character or two, pushes in, pulls out or shakes, and can be lit as an evening, a night or a spotlight. ● Record video makes a video file of the whole cartoon.

Games, including in depth

A game can be seen from the side, from above or in space, started from blank or remixed from twelve ready games. Sword Duel can be played by two students on two Chromebooks, by a short code. Games with depth fly into the screen: a trench, an open sky, open space, or a place to walk round the student's own 3D builds at their real size.

Where it leads

A build goes out of the Forge as glTF, which Blender opens with each part its own object; it also goes out as a file a 3D printer prints, and into Minecraft as blocks: take your build out. So the parent, the origin, the mirror and the array a student used here are waiting for them in Blender under the same ideas.

For a class

There are no accounts: work is handed in as a link or a file, so a world kept on a shared Chromebook is never the only copy. The free voices download once on each device, about 110 MB, the first time a line is spoken. The teachers' page has the checks to make before a first lesson.

Where Scratch is the better choice

For a younger student's first year of programming, and for sharing projects with a large community where strangers find, play and remix them, choose Scratch: Jabbertoon has no gallery, and its work is shared by link. (Scratch is a project of the Scratch Foundation; Jabbertoon is not affiliated with it.)

Build it with an AI

A student who uses an AI assistant can have it build in Jabbertoon with the Jabbertoon tools, the same steps the buttons take, and open what it made from a link. How to connect your AI