The Potential of Scratch in Today’s Schools

The Scratch programming language, developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab, enables users to create a wide-range of media-rich projects including: games, interactive art, animated stories, tutorials, and music. Scratch contains a paint editor, a recorder, as well as the ability to interact with the physical world through sensors connected to a USB. Written in Squeak, Scratch is an open-source program which can be downloaded and redistributed freely. Scratch will run on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X operating systems. Programming is done with building “blocks” which snap together only if the computer code is “syntactically” correct. Although students may need to reassess the logic of their code, this low barrier-to-entry often has students implementing programs in less than a day.

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants 

The name Scratch comes from the community of disc jockeys who would “scratch” records together to create new sounds. Scratch is built upon a similar philosophy; users may download resources from the on-line Scratch community and create their own remixes. Resources include animated characters (also known as sprites) and backgrounds, as well as source codes for any project. The openness and sharing, as well as the ability to modify and build upon the work of others, provides project builders the opportunity to create projects greater than what they might be able to accomplish without such support. The Scratch community encourages giving proper credit for such resources. Scratchers have the opportunity to save their creations off-line or to upload their work to the scratch.mit.edu website. All projects on the Scratch website are shared under the Creative Commons license.  

Educational Considerations

Education need not take a “one-size-fits-all” approach where everyone in the class is responsible for learning the same information or doing the same thing at the same time. While we might argue that today’s students know much about technology, we should recognize that the very nature of technology is changing. Being technologically literate is more than gathering information from the Internet, creating a PowerPoint presentation, or sending 10,000 texts per month. Scratch, is a unique Web 2.0 tool in that it not only permits users to be producers of digital media, it encourages creativity, problem-solving, and collaboration, all essential skills for the 21^st Century. 

The Global Community

While there are other software programs which encourage creativity and problem-solving, the global and social nature of the Scratch makes it unique. The global community permits users to complete tasks which they could otherwise not complete. As early as the 1930s, Vygotsky, a social theorist, recognized the importance of social interaction in development and cognition. “All the higher cognitive functions originate as actual relations between human beings” (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 57). Vygotsky believes that one develops higher levels of cognition interacting with others, as opposed to acting alone. The Scratch community is a sharing community which also permits advanced students to take on greater challenges.

References:

Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 

The following Scratch project generates random job interview questions: