Scratch: Open-source programming for kids

(Credit: MIT)

Peter Lofgren of Redpill (Sweden) sent over a link to Scratch, a cool open-source project from MIT Media Labs. The purpose? Make programming easy and approachable for kids as young as eight-years old. If the gallery of existing projects is any indicator, it seems to be working.

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.

I like the fact that Scratch makes development easy, but it also teaches correct principles. As an open-source project, it teaches kids how to interact with the new world of open development. Anyone out there have kids that have used Scratch and can offer up a testimonial?

[botchagalupe]

You should also look at Alice and StoryTellingAlice. My 9 year old has been using it for about a year. I also gave him a copy of Scratch to play with. He preferred Alice over scratch. I tried to get him to blog about that, but that was way to ambitious of me. Here is a link if you are interested...

Teach your parents well

[theopensourcerer]

I went to Scratch's web site and guess what?

No version for Linux. A forum thread started mid-last year where they said they'd get one done for the start of 2008. A few comments and some hacks since then by interested parties but not exactly enthusing me.

I went to the website for Alice and found clearly indicated versions for Windows, Mac AND Linux. Gues which I'll choose?

[Aaron_Fulkerson]

Scratch is fantastic! Also, I'm proud of the fact their entire support portal is powered by MindTouch Deki. :-)

[andrewkatz]

Yes Matt - my son is 8 and has been using it for a few months now (actually, I saw an article in New Scientist on it, and showed it him, to which his response was "Duh! I've been using it for weeks, Dad!").

It's fun and engaging - it's easy to create and animate objects, and cause them to interact, and at the same time get into some fairly complex programming.

What's particularly interesting is the way that it encourages sharing of code. There's good indoctrination, and bad indoctrination....

- Andrew

[kiwibuntu]

For those interested in using Scratch on Ubuntu the following thread may be helpful: http://scratch.mit.edu/forums/viewtopic.php?id=6207

[andrewkatz]

From Oscar: I think it's very good. One of the things that I find most useful is the fact that you can use equations for to turn random items into numbers wich can then be used to "broadcast" wich means making other sprites do things. I've shared some of the sprites and projects I've made so that other people can use them.


- Oscar (aged 8) (AND I DIDN'T SAY 'DUH')