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Oct. 3rd, 2009
Scratch a free programming language from MIT. Made for kids from about 8 years and up.
You can import your own pictures and sounds to it
.
The programming is all drag and drop. I think ultimately people should be able to write code from a keyboard, but I see value and FUN in this as a gentle introductory way to get people used to some of the programming concepts before they have to worry about syntax and in just a few minutes you can make things move around, interact, talk.
You can share it with others by posting it to the mit website and sending a link to it. Then most people will be able to play it in their browsers.
download it here http://mit.scratch.edu
intro page: http://info.scratch.mit.edu/About_Scratch
examples posted (made by presenter at code camp who teaches this to kids) http://scratch.mit.edu/users/davebric
I haven't made anything yet, but in the presentation he was making a bee fly around and say 'hooray' (in a talk ballon) when it encountered some pollen (bee was clipart, pollen he drew as 3 dots together in the program) and then he added a recording of a kid from the class buzzing.
It's sort of fun to see how the blocks of code snap together and you can't make syntax errors :) with it.
He also showed us Alice... cool name, and 3-d graphics, but Scratch excites me more and is more easily shared. To share Alice the person you're sharing with has to have it also.
http://www.alice.org/
I really think anyone with kids who can read well enough to figure out what the actions say should introduce them to this.
You can import your own pictures and sounds to it
.
The programming is all drag and drop. I think ultimately people should be able to write code from a keyboard, but I see value and FUN in this as a gentle introductory way to get people used to some of the programming concepts before they have to worry about syntax and in just a few minutes you can make things move around, interact, talk.
You can share it with others by posting it to the mit website and sending a link to it. Then most people will be able to play it in their browsers.
download it here http://mit.scratch.edu
intro page: http://info.scratch.mit.edu/About_Scratch
examples posted (made by presenter at code camp who teaches this to kids) http://scratch.mit.edu/users/davebric
I haven't made anything yet, but in the presentation he was making a bee fly around and say 'hooray' (in a talk ballon) when it encountered some pollen (bee was clipart, pollen he drew as 3 dots together in the program) and then he added a recording of a kid from the class buzzing.
It's sort of fun to see how the blocks of code snap together and you can't make syntax errors :) with it.
He also showed us Alice... cool name, and 3-d graphics, but Scratch excites me more and is more easily shared. To share Alice the person you're sharing with has to have it also.
http://www.alice.org/
I really think anyone with kids who can read well enough to figure out what the actions say should introduce them to this.