Touch Develop Tutorials

TouchDevelop.com is a new tool available from Microsoft. The great thing about it is that you can program from any environment, anywhere and anytime. It runs through a html5 browser and you can program simple scripts by tapping on the screen. I have tried this from a Windows phone, Ipad, Ipod and an Iphone and it works across all platforms. It really is a great tool to introduce to students.

Click here to access the scheme of work developed for KS3/KS4 –

Last updated 5/02/2013 with Lesson 1/2
Lesson 3/4/5 uploaded 10/03/2013 – Videos available to support

Last week at BETT, it was announced that computer science was going to become a part of the Ebacc. With this in mind, I decided to make some video tutorials which would help other teachers in building applications. Whether teachers want to build applications for their subjects, or whether they just want to build their own applications. These tutorials should get you on your way.

Any TouchDevelop user can install, run, edit, and publish scripts. You can share your scripts with other people by publishing them to the TouchDevelop script bazaar, or by submitting them as an app to the Windows Store or Windows Phone Store. I am hoping to build the library up bit, by bit but here are 5 starter activities for you.

To access Touchdevelop.com, you will need a windows live ID, Google account or Facebook account.

Video Tutorials

Setting a background image in TouchDevelop.com

This tutorial explains how to set up a background and how to insert a background image to your program. Nice introduction to the touch develop environment.

Creating a character and a sprite

This introduction shows you how to create a character and how to import it onto the screen. Fun activity to introduce students to sprites.

Controlling a character using events

This tutorial shows you how to control your character / sprite based on the movement of your finger on the screen of the device.

If characters overlap each other

This video shows you how to control the overlap event on the game. You can program collision events on the game.

Update the score using a global variable

This video shows you how you can control your score by using a global variable and how you have update it based on the collision event.

Students learn the basics of tidying up code and creating procedures that they can repeat over and over.

Creating a procedure

Writing a function using the Touch Develop Platform

Creating a function

Programming X and Y co-ordinates to control characters moving left and right throughout the screen.

Controlling a character on the screen using the X and Y Co-Ordinates