Volume 1, Issue 13
Have you ever wanted to create your own video games or design your own interactive stories?
Scratch (http://scratch.mit.edu) is a programming language that you can use to create your own interactive media - stories, games, animations, and simulations. To create programs in Scratch, you simply snap together programming-instruction blocks, just as you would snap together puzzle pieces or LEGO bricks.
Since Scratch's release in May 2007, hundreds of thousands of young people have created millions of projects with Scratch, all around the world, in a variety of settings, including at home, schools, libraries, and museums. Most people who create with Scratch are between the ages of 8 and 16, but people of all ages use it to create interactive media for fun (like creating an interactive greeting card for a friend), work (like quickly prototyping ideas), and study (like as an introduction to computer science for both majors and non-majors at colleges and universities across the country).
Explore more than 2.5 million projects in the Scratch online community.
But Scratch is about more than just creating.
It's about sharing!
In addition to the authoring environment, Scratch is an online community where people can share their projects and exchange feedback with others. Each day, members upload more than 2,500 new Scratch projects to the website - on average, two new projects every minute - with more than 2.5 million projects available.
The collection of projects uploaded is incredibly diverse, and includes interactive newsletters, science simulations, virtual tours, animated dance contests, interactive tutorials, and many others, all programmed with the Scratch environment and its graphical programming blocks. You can also download any project to see how it was made!
Who thinks of this stuff?
Scratch is developed by a team of researchers at the MIT Media Lab in a group called Lifelong Kindergarten, which is led by Professor Mitch Resnick. To create an environment like Scratch, it takes considerable time and effort, as well as different types of expertise. Each team member has a different educational background - including electrical engineering, education, psychology, art, and design - but a common element is computer science. Scratch Team members love to design, build, create, make, play, and help others have creative experiences with computers!
Watch an overview of Scratch: http://vimeo.com/29457909.
Download Scratch for free: http://info.scratch.mit.edu/Scratch_1.4_Download.
Make your first Scratch project: http://info.scratch.mit.edu/Video_Tutorials.
Explore the Scratch online community: http://scratch.mit.edu/.