Scratch: Kids Making Computer Games
All kids that I’ve met love being on the computer. It’s fun…let’s face it. Of course like all parents I don’t want my children downloading clips of their favorite TV shows and playing endless computer games while the sun shines outside.
OK.
But what about when it’s the weekend, it’s raining, and the WII’s broken!
I have been foraging the internet looking for programs that could teach the basics of making a computer game, a subject taught in colleges, yet very interesting to the younger generation. I came across Scratch, a free software program designed to facilitate a child to create a basic computer game.
I downloaded the program and had a go. OK. I really needed to read the manual. I had the same feeling I had when I installed Photoshop for the first time. The online manual was an easy read designed for kids.
It was not easy to make anything impressive, I have to tell you and after 45 minutes I gave up for the night. I think I need to spend the best part of a weekend familiarizing myself with the program (to keep me up to Speed, excuse the pun!)
My daughter would probably like it. My 5 yo son would want to like it but I feel the mathematical concepts are above his level and I would have to sit there with him and explain everything as he went..but he wants me to do that anyway!
The program is designed for kids from 8-18 for use in afterschool programs. Here is an article about Scratch in action in aftercare programs. It was designed by the M.I.T. Media Lab. Here is how they describe their project.
“Scratch is a programming environment that kids can use to create their own animated stories, video games, and interactive art, and share their creations with one another across the Internet. To create Scratch programs, kids snap together graphical building blocks, each representing a different command or action. Kids learn important computational ideas as they transform images, mix in sound clips and drum beats, and integrate inputs from real-world sensors.”
What do you think about this?
Scratch is available free of charge from the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab.
May 14th, 2009 at 12:34 am
This is the right area to explore with them. Rich media is in its infancy. The skills they develop will not be wasted and who knows, we may have the next Will Wright (The Sims, Spore) in our midst…..and he was a Montessori kid too…