Jan 8, 2008

Scratch: A new programming language for kids that supports stories, animations, games, music, art, and web-sharing, from MIT.

"Scratch is designed to help young people (ages 8 and up) develop 21st century learning skills. As they create Scratch projects, young people learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also gaining a deeper understanding of the process of design." (Scratch website)

Scratch can be downloaded, free of charge, from the website. It can run on Windows as well on Macs. There are over 12,000 contributors to this project, with over 60,000 registered members. The website provides plenty of support for teachers and students.

The Scratch project is run by the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab, along with the UCLA School of Education and Information Studies. The project was funded by the National Science Foundation.

I'm looking forward to playing with Scratch on a touch-screen or interactive whiteboard.


Leave a comment if you use Scratch with kids- or for yourself.


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

If you'd like to learn more about Scratch, I'd encourage you to come to our Scratch@MIT conference on July 24-26 on the MIT campus (http://scratch.mit.edu/conference)

Since the launch of Scratch in May 2007, more than 125,000 projects have been uploaded to the Scratch community website. Children around the world have created and shared an incredibly diverse range of interactive creations, including online newscasts, multi-episode soap operas, science simulations, and community service announcements.

The Scratch@MIT conference will provide an opportunity to share experiences and discuss future possibilities for Scratch. For more information, see http://scratch.mit.edu/conference

Mitch Resnick and the rest of the MIT Scratch Team
http://scratch.mit.edu

Lynn Marentette said...

Thanks, Mitch. I think I can make it!