I attended Scratch Day at MIT on Saturday. There were 200 people there, young and older alike, while thousands of other people around the world participated  in the learning and all using a program called Scratch to create new presentations. The whole program and process was new to me. It was first developed 5 years ago with the first Scratch Day occurring in 2007. Most of you are new to Scratch so let me just say it has some interesting applications in the classrooms and at home with young people. Basic skills needed to work with Scratch are some reading skills and an understanding of numerical value, to know that 12 is less than 21. I have been mulling over my own experience and trying to think of how I can use this program to enhance the learning experience for my students. I spent about 30-45 minutes working on this small action by my “sprite.” It was a fellow student (who happened to be about 10 years old) who helped me to get rid of some of the clutter in my coding and simplify the product. Click on the sprite and you will go to the Scratch page. Click on the sprite again and it will follow the little program I wrote for it.

This is what the program page looks like.

This is a link to the Scratch project page on nursery rhymes. You can’t tell by watching which are created by adults and which by children. My personal favorite is the Baa Baa Black Sheep one.

The brilliant minds at MIT are using a basic block construction in developing their program. Now take this simple building block approach to a higher level and you can see some applications for all kinds of robotics but it goes much further. I am really inspired by Mitchel Resnick, one of the developers of Scratch. Here is a Wonderful! video where Mitch is interviewed and explains the rationale far better than I can. Please take a look. You are sure to be inspired as well.