September 15, 2008 11:07 AM PDT
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?
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
Teach your parents well
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?
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
- by andrewkatz September 19, 2008 12:13 PM PDT
- 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.
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(6 Comments)- Oscar (aged 8) (AND I DIDN'T SAY 'DUH')