What is Scratch?

Scratch was developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab. I first learn of it shortly before the first Scratch Conference in 2008. It is a visual programming environment that is so easy to learn, a 5 years old can easily learn to use it! You can use it to create your own interactive stories, music videos, animations, games, music and art.

Why Should your Child Play with Scratch?

Whether you like it or not, today's children live part of their lives online and on computing devices.

Why should your child be a passive consumer of electronic media if she can be an active creator?
Why should your child play video game when she can create her own video games?
Do not think of this as learning to program, but rather developing computational thinking, a skill that is required for the 21st century.

SCRATCH@MIT Conference 2012 Talk

I was one of the speakers at the Ignite talks at this year's conference. It was great fun. The title of my talk is "Ten things I learned from creating a Scratch After school club. The presentation slides are here although they do not completely stand on their own.

CSED Week Interview 2011

My ScratchEd's CSEd Week 2011 interview talks about the background of my Scratch Club. The video shows some of the cool projects made by my students!