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I just have to tell you about this computer program - it’s such a hit in our house. Our eight-year-old daughter is hooked, as is my husband. Scratch is a computer programming language with a twist. Simply put, it was designed to get kids playing with computer programming. Gone are the days when you have to type in cryptic commands to tell computers what to do – often finding the program gets stuck in a tail-spin because of one or more programming errors.
Forget about writing lines of code
Scratch lets users group together tiles of commands to direct the movement of characters, add music and backgrounds, for example. It’s a great way for kids to let their imagination flow in creating interactive stories, animations, games, music and art, yet it teaches them about important mathematical and computational ideas. Children can now create elaborate scenes and games without having to type lines and lines of code.
Collaboration
One area that our family hasn’t even got to yet is the collaborative element of Scratch. According to MIT’s Media Lab (the creators of Scratch), there are 2,000 new Scratch projects created every day and many of those are remixes, based on the work of other students.
Thank you to the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at MIT Media Lab for creating this great tool. Enough said, go try it out. It won’t cost you a dime and your kids will learn lots about computer programming.
