Scratch- Programming Language for Children

Last fall I visited The Lifelong Kindergarten Group at MIT Media Labs. This graduate research group develops digital tools that have the same creativity potential of kindergarten tools like blocks and paint. They showed us a a new program called Scratch they were working on that allows young children to program. It uses a drag and drop approach of digital jigsaw pieces that fit together. The Media Lab has also created a social networking site for users of the program, a unique feature that researchers hope will not only appeal to the younger generation that uses such sites on a daily basis, but foster collaboration and cooperative problem solving and share projects. Click Here to Download Free Program.

In a podcast by Alan November Dr. Mitchel Resnick said, “We see this as the next step in web 2.0. Even now people have mostly shared what I would consider rather old media. To be honest text and pictures are really old media. We really see this as the next step increasingly aware that the future will be based on the ability to think creativity.”