I’ve been waiting for this.
When I was a kid, we had LOGO. In the 90’s, kids could do basic programming with Hypercard (kind of). I’ve been wondering what the next “kid-friendly” programming language would be. Now I see that:
‘The Lifelong Kindergarten Group’ at the MIT Media Lab has released “Scratch.”
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(From their “about” page) “Scratch is a new programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art — and share your creations on the web.
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.”
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I just spent about 10 minutes on their site and am impressed.
- Available for Mac and Windows.
- FREE – Licensed under Creative Commons
- Great education focused resources
It isn’t the greatest app ever written – it lacks export in any 3rd party formats and such, but I still stand impressed.
BTW – It looks like I am late to the party on this one – if the BBC and the Boston Globe have done articles about it, I am ashamed that I hadn’t heard about it yet.
Work with 4th graders and up? Get thee downloading!
