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
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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.eduintro page:
http://info.scratch.mit.edu/About_Scratchexamples posted (made by presenter at code camp who teaches this to kids)
http://scratch.mit.edu/users/davebricI 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.