I’ve read a lot about Scratch, a visual programing language that was developed by the fine people at MIT. However, I never actually took the time out to play with it, so I finally signed myself up and decided to take it for a spin. Since I’ve recommended this site to several friends that want to introduce their kids to programing, i figured I should check out the product for myself. I was especially curious on what a child could actually get out this application, and if it could lead to learning some basic programing skills.
Scratch is designed to help young people (ages 8 and up) develop 21st century learning skills. As they create and share Scratch projects, young people learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also learning to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively. – MIT
I decided to give myself a small project to test a wide variety of functionality. Not knowing the versatility of Scratch, i decided to create a quick proof of concept and create some very basic game interactions (Left, Right, Jump, and Collision detection). Once i made myself at home, and started getting acquainted with the interface, i just started exploring. The first thing i noticed was there was some vocabulary changes that would be better understood by a younger audience. For example, what is typcally called “Loop” is called “Forever”.
The language offers all the main syntax that makes up just about all programming languages, such as loops, conditionals, and variety of properties, along with several other options. Here is my proof of concept (http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/abritez/783281). It’s nothing fancy, but enough to make it clear to me that any person with a bit of prior programing knowledge could get something rolling rather quickly.
The real question is, can a kid with “no” prior knowledge learn on this platform. I am pretty convinced that some kids could get some sort of interaction happening with Scratch after some exploration, trial and error, and bit of guidance. As i mentioned before, the programing language is visual, and includes scaffolding for the children in the form of interlocking shapes which are color coded and of different shapes. Most children understand how puzzles work and can identify patterns at a pretty young age, so this is a great way of taking the scariness out of programing. Scratch substitutes lines of code with color coded blocks of functionality. Although there is quite a bit of concepts that the learner would need to get acquainted with, it is definitely a great way to get kids excited about making game, instead of just playing them, which makes there experience with Scratch and programming more meaningful.
A couple other very important features that Scratch possesses are:
• All source code is open, so students could open up each others code and learn
• Students could not only make an interaction, but they could easily share the interaction with others.
For more information on Scratch check out some of the research (http://info.scratch.mit.edu/Research)
Would love to hear what others think about this program.
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Great article