Not a mobile post, but I got plenty of those lined up, so here’s something a bit different from the norm here on the blog.

MIT media labs has an interesting project going on called “Scratch”, which appears to be a fun and easy to learn platform that can be used to create very basic interactive content (if you’re as old as me, think “Apple Logo” only much cooler and more visual).

Yeah, so we are not talking Flash Player like functionality here folks … but it’s still a cool idea … I only bring it up, because a few years ago I taught animation and Flash to a bunch of middle school students (for free & fun, actually). Kids at that age were actually doing some pretty cool things with Flash with some encouragement … and that was 4 years ago. I imagine now a days they’re actually high schoolers creating the latest and greatest MySpace service.

Now it seems MIT has gone a step further and provided a means get students interested at even a younger age. I know there are other products out there for this age group, but it’s still cool. Mainly cause it’s free, and second it’s from MIT and has a similar UI to some of the experimental music software that came out of there a while back (sorry, forgot the name of the project).

What exactly is “Scratch?”: Scratch is a new programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art — and share your creations on the web.

Scratch is designed to help young people (ages 8 and up) develop 21st century learning skills. As they create Scratch projects, young people learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also gaining a deeper understanding of the process of design.

If you take a peek at the IDE, it’s pretty trivial to learn (very visual), and if you check out the gallery, kids are already making simple games with it.

Wanna give it a try? You can download it here.

If I were Adobe, I’d back this “program”. Why? Be like Apple, and get them (training on a timeline) while they’re young!

Now, where’s the mobile version? Scratch mobile?

Also, it’s a shame no export to SWF feature exists currently.

To conclude this post, sometimes I wonder what programming will be like in ten years … just as punch-hole cards date programmers, will text-editors and IDEs this generation? Probably!

Update: There’s even a logic board for it, called Scratch Board. Ha! phidgets, only for kids!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 15th, 2007 at 6:05 pm and is filed under Animation, Fun, Games, MIT Media Lab, Scratch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.