Scratch Foundation

Creative coding for everyone.

[scratchfoundation]

“Coding is a language, so you can use that language to express whatever ideas you want to express.” 

(via Cartoon Network YouTube)

[scratchfoundation]

Celebrate ‪Scratch Day‬ by creating a sky parade float with Scratch programming! Stay tuned for the full parade on Scratch next week.

[scratchfoundation]

"It's not just about bringing products to the world. It's about bringing change to the world." mitsha.re/TZHtU

[reddragdiva]

it turns out scratch is probably the answer

let’s give credit where it’s due. the almost entirely reprehensible tories have done one truly brilliant thing: they announced a couple of years ago that computer lessons where kids just learnt to use microsoft office were not sufficient, so they were going to give all children lessons in coding.

what this actually means is that they’re getting seven-to-eight-year-olds and putting them in front of scratch.

and so you have pink-dress-wearing, my little pony loving girly girls like my daughter and her friends playing with scratch, making animations and learning the concept that things are programmable. that everything their computer does is a more complicated version of a scratch animation with dancing ballerinas.

(freda asks me to note that the letter icons and the background in the above example are sprites that come with scratch.)

the school version is the standalone runtime. (the windows version works well under wine on linux.) however, the kid can go to scratch.mit.edu and make a login. and what happens there? they learn to SHARE PROJECTS and SWAP CODE WITH OTHER PEOPLE.

it is difficult for me to put into words just how highly i approve of this. i don’t know what genius inveighled themselves into the ministry of education (apparently these ones), but this is just unbelievably awesome. i’m watching the kid right now, animating bouncing ball and and cat sprites and making her animation play sounds and making her own version of Pong, and flapping her hands with joy like she’s going to take flight.

the very concept of programmability is rarer than you probably think. i was on a perl-for-web-developers course several years ago; it took one webdev two hours to realise that computers follow a precise list of instructions for every single thing they do. they’d never consciously understood this before. and the person in question was neither stupid nor an incompetent webdev. their eyes lit up in epiphany as many things about the world suddenly made sense.

(the kids do learn “textual languages” as well later on, don’t worry.)

so, scratch. if you aren’t fortunate enough to live somewhere with a school system that does this, get your kid onto scratch.mit.edu and get them making stuff. or if you yourself have never programmed something. DO IT. you will be delighted.

[scratchfoundation]

Inspired by the classic 1971 Coca-Cola commercial, the Scratch Team invited Scratch users to add their own voices and characters to a remixable project. Within a week, we received an overwhelming number of amazing projects and combined responses together to create one massive project. The Scratch community around the world brings you this collaborative project: 'I'd like to teach the world to code.' 

[scratchfoundation]

There's no shortage of delicious food on Scratch! Pack a lunch with this Scratch project.

[scratchfoundation]

“I like the idea of an instrument that’s digital — that works by running off of technology. Technology is malleable. We use it more and more often in our lives. When you take technology and combine it with music or instruments, you can get something that’s even better. You can change the volume. You can change the sound it makes.”

(Source)

[scratchfoundation]

Happy Earth Day! Check out this ‪#‎EarthDay‬ inspired game by the Scratcher Bumblefly!

[scratchfoundation]

To quote Neil DeGrasse Tyson, 'kids are born scientists.' Everything they do is about exploring and testing hypotheses.‎ “What’s under this rock?” “What happens if I tip over this glass of milk?”

Mark Roth

(Source)

[scratchfoundation]

For April Fools Day, the Scratch Team imagines what an edible version of Scratch would be like.

[micdotcom]

Watch: Incredible video shows why girls avoid science and tech — and how we can change it

[scratchfoundation]

Coding provides kids with a base from which to explore. Once an objective is complete, students nearly always question what else they can do to modify it, tinker with the rules, or completely bend things upside down.

Brad Peterson, “Coding Like a Kid” 

[thisisandela]

By Jeremy Johnson

With less than 1 percent unemployment in many technical fields and a skills gap that’s widening, finding a job as a software developer may not seem like the most challenging professional hurdle. But it’s also true that it still takes more than just technical skills to advance...

[scratchfoundation]

Getting a job as a programmer is one path that some kids will take. But to be honest, that's not my main goal. My main goal is to help everyone be prepared for life and tomorrow's society. [...] What's most important is becoming a good learner and developing the ability to think and act creatively. That's what these kids are learning. It will serve them well regardless of whether they grow up to be a programmer or if they grow up to become a marketing manager or a community organizer or a politician, or a lawyer. No matter what you do, you need to be able to think creatively, reason systematically and work collaboratively.

Mitchel Resnick on CBC Radio’s The Current

[scratchfoundation]

When kids are starting to grow up, we want to help them express themselves--get their ideas out to the world. They might start by drawing pictures, but when they're ready, they start writing to start communicating. I think [it's] the same thing with coding. As kids are ready to start expressing their ideas and creating their own stories with paper and pencil and crayons, kids can make static images and write down stories. With coding, kids can make stories that are dynamic and interactive.

Mitchel Resnick on CBC Radio’s The Current

[scratchfoundation]

I do think that all young people should grow up learning to code. I think it shouldn't just be in schools. It should be across all parts of kids' lives.

Mitchel Resnick on CBC Radio’s The Current

[scratchfoundation]

Google to teach Boys & Girls Clubs to code

Google is teaming up with Boys & Girls Clubs of America to bring a computer science program to more middle school students around the country.

"We are not trying to teach them to be computer scientists, but we are trying to help them feel more confident in using computers, to persevere when they are debugging things and help them understand the impact of computer science on the world." - Maggie Johnson, Google's director of education and university relations