CS50's Introduction to Programming with Scratch

CS50's Introduction to Programming with Scratch teaches the fundamentals of programming through Scratch, the block-based visual language developed at the MIT Media Lab and used at the start of CS50x. Instead of typing code, you snap together graphical blocks to build animations, games, interactive art and stories, and along the way meet the concepts that carry over to text-based languages such as Java and Python: functions, return values, conditions, loops and variables. The material is arranged as nine weeks, each with a lecture and a project, followed by a final project. No prior programming experience is expected.

The course is free through Harvard's OpenCourseWare, and a free edX account is needed to submit projects for feedback. Scoring at least 70%, which the certificate page explains means full marks on each of the nine projects, earns a free CS50 Certificate. A verified certificate is available from edX, where Harvard's listing gives the price as $299 and rates the course introductory. Harvard describes the course as preparation for later programming courses.