puter science, it is important to move
on to other languages. But for many
other Scratchers, who see programming
as a medium for expression, not a path
toward a career, Scratch is sufficient
for their needs. With Scratch, they can
continue to experiment with new forms
of self-expression, producing a diverse
range of projects while deepening their
understanding of a core set of computational ideas. A little bit of programming
goes a long way.
More broadly, there needs to be a shift
in how people think about programming, and about computers in general. We need to expand the notion of
“digital fluency” to include designing
and creating, not just browsing and interacting. Only then will initiatives like
Scratch have a chance to live up to their
1. Bransford, J., Brown, A., and Cocking, R. How People
Learn: Mind, Brain, Experience, and School. National
Academies Press, Washington, D. C., 2000.
2. diSessa, A. Changing Minds: Computers, Learning, and
Literacy. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2000.
3. Guzdial, M. Programming environments for novices. In
Computer Science Education Research, S. Fincher and
M. Petre, Eds. Taylor & Francis, Abingdon, U.K., 2004,
4. Kafai, Y., Peppler, K., and Chiu, G. High-tech
programmers in low-income communities: Seeding
reform in a community technology center. In
Communities and Technologies, C. Steinfield, B.
Pentland, M. Ackerman, and N. Contractor, Eds.
Springer, New York, 2007, 545–564.
5. Kay, A. Squeak etoys, children, and learning; http://
As we develop future versions, our
goal is to make Scratch even more tinkerable, meaningful, and social. With
our Scratch Sensor Board (http://info.
scratch.mit.edu/Sensor_Boards), people can create Scratch projects that
sense and react to events in the physical world. We are also developing a
version of Scratch that runs on mobile
devices and a Web-based version that
enables people to access online data
and program online activities.
Many people have contributed to the
development of Scratch and even
more to the ideas underlying Scratch.
We’d like to thank friends and former
members of the Lifelong Kindergarten
group who have worked on Scratch, especially Tammy Stern, Dave Feinberg,
Han Xu, Margarita Dekoli, Leo Burd,
Oren Zuckerman, Nick Bushak, and
Paula Bonta. We are grateful to Kylie
Peppler, Grace Chui, and other members of Yasmin Kafai’s research
team, who conducted and participated in field studies in Scratch’s
early development. Scratch was
deeply influenced and inspired by the
work of Seymour Papert and Alan Kay.
We appreciate financial support from
the National Science Foundation
(grant ITR-0325828), Microsoft, Intel
Foundation, Nokia, and MIT Media
Lab research consortia. The names
of all children mentioned here are
6. Kelleher, C. and Pausch, R. Using storytelling to
motivate programming. Commun. ACM 50, 7 (July
7. Kelleher, C. and Pausch, R. Lowering the barriers
to programming: A taxonomy of programming
environments and languages for novice programmers.
ACM Computing Surveys 37, 2 (June 2005), 83–137.
8. Malan, D. and Leitner, H. Scratch for budding computer
scientists. ACM SIGCSE Bulletin 39, 1 (Mar. 2007),
9. Maloney, J., Peppler, K., Kafai, Y., Resnick, M., and
Rusk, N. Programming by choice: Urban youth learning
programming with Scratch. ACM SIGCSE Bulletin 40,
1 (Mar. 2008), 367–371.
10. Margolis, J. Stuck in the Shallow End: Education, Race,
and Computing. MI T Press, Cambridge, MA, 2008.
Probably the biggest challenges for
Scratch are not technological but cultural and educational.10 Scratch has
been a success among early adopters,
but we need to provide better educational support for it to spread more
broadly. We recently launched a new
online community, called Scratch-Ed ( http://scratched.media.mit.edu),
where educators share their ideas, experiences, and lesson plans for Scratch.
11. Minsky, M. Introduction to Logo Works. In Logo Works:
Challenging Programs in Logo, C. Solomon, M. Minsky,
and B. Harvey, Eds. McGraw-Hill, New York, 1986.
12. Monroy-Hernández, A. and Resnick, M. Empowering
kids to create and share programmable media.
Interactions 15, 2 (Mar.–Apr. 2008), 50–53.
13. Papert, S. Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and
Powerful Ideas. Basic Books, New York, 1980.
14. Peppler, K. and Kafai, Y. From SuperGoo to Scratch:
Exploring creative media production in informal
learning. Journal on Learning, Media, and Technology
32, 7 (2007), 149–166.
15. Prensky, M. Digital natives, digital immigrants. On the
Horizon 9, 5 (Oct. 2001), 1–6.
16. Resnick, M. Sowing the seeds for a more creative
society. Learning and Leading with Technology (Dec.
17. Resnick, M. Behavior construction kits. Commun. ACM
36, 7 (July 1993), 64–71.
18. Wing, J. Computational thinking. Commun. ACM 49, 3
(Mar. 2006), 33–35.
Mitchel Resnick, John Maloney, Andrés Monroy-
Hernández, Natalie Rusk, Evelyn Eastmond, Karen
Brennan, Amon Millner, Eric Rosenbaum, and Jay
Silver are all researchers and members of the Scratch
Team ( http://scratch.mit.edu) at the Media Laboratory of
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge,
MA. Brian Silverman is president of the Playful Invention
Company, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Yasmin Kafai is
a professor in the Graduate School of Education of the
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA.
Figure 6. Scratch Web site.
© 2009 ACM 0001-0782/09/1100 $10.00
NOVEMBER 2009 | VOL.52 | NO. 11 | COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM