BigShinyThing

Scratch is a free programming tool that allows anyone to create their own animated stories, video games and interactive artworks has been developed. Primarily aimed at children, Scratch does not require prior knowledge of complex computer languages (although, given the apparent hacker mentality of most digital natives this might not be an issue).

Instead, it uses a simple graphical interface that allows programs to be assembled like building blocks.

“These days, kids interact with all kinds of dynamic things on screen but it is usually a one-way street — they are usually interacting with things that other people have created,” said Professor Mitchel Resnick, one of the researchers at the Lifelong Kindergarten group at MIT which developed Scratch. Resnick also invented Lego Mindstorms, a robotics toolkit often used in teaching.

With Scratch we want to let kids to be the creators. We want them to create interesting dynamic things on the computer.

The program works by making the act of creating a computer program more like building with Lego bricks.

“Kids make programs by snapping blocks together,” said Professor Resnick, whose position is in part supported by the toy company (way to survive in the 21st century, Lego!).

Objects and characters, chosen from a menu and created in a paint editor or simply cut and pasted off the web, are animated by snapping together different “action” blocks into stacks.

“They don’t have to worry about the obscure punctuation and syntax common in most programming languages,” he said.

Each block contains a separate command, such as “move” or “play drum” and each action can be modified from a drop-down menu. Blocks can only be stacked if they fit together.

So, for example, if someone wanted to animate a cat walking across the screen they could modify the move block to tell the cat to walk forward 10 steps.

If they then wanted the cat to bang a drum as it walked, they could stack the play-drum block underneath, choosing a sound for the instrument and how long each beat should last.

Other actions, such as speaking, changing colour or triggering music, can then be added to complete the animation.

Scratch is inspired by the method Hip Hop DJs use to mix and scratch records to create new sounds. “With Scratch, our goal is to allow people to mix together all kinds of media, not just sounds, in creative ways,” said Professor Resnick.

“We want people to start from existing materials — grabbing an image, grabbing some sound, maybe even bits of someone else’s program and then extending them and mixing them to make them their own.”

Digital creations can then be shared on a site where users can watch other creations and even borrow elements from other Scratch projects to act as raw materials for their own.

Scratch is now available to download for free and works with both Apple Macs and Windows PCs. If you are reading this close to the launch date (15th May 2007) you might want to wait a little while — coverage from digg.com and the BBC et al caused such a huge amount of interest that their server crashed.

AND a version of the tool is also currently being developed for the XO laptop, designed by the One Laptop Per Child Project.

Source: BBC.