ACM TechNews

Created From Scratch

MIT News (07/21/08) Chandler, David

MIT's Media Lab has developed Scratch, a free programming language intended to let anyone create and share video games and animated stories. Media Lab professor and Scratch project leader Mitchel Resnick says more than 160,000 Scratch projects have been created and uploaded to the Scratch Web site, which allows anyone to try the projects. Scratch uses a set of modular building blocks that can be dragged into place and linked together like Lego bricks to create simple computer programs. The Scratch Web site has tutorials, forums, and an extensive archive of projects. Scratch has been used to create an ongoing soap-opera program with new episodes every week, online competitions, and sophisticated simulations that reproduce scientific, historical, or cultural settings. One group of users created an animated newscast, called the Scratch News Network, which features the Scratch cat, the cartoon logo for Scratch, to provide information on the Scratch community. Resnick says Scratch is expanding beyond the primary age group and is being used in college-level programming classes as a way of introducing students to basic concepts. For example, Harvard uses Scratch in the first weeks of a programming class for non-computer science majors.

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/scratch-0721.html

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