Scratch on the iPhone

Monday, April 19, 2010

During the past week, several journalists and bloggers asked for the Scratch Team's reaction to Apple's decision not to allow a Scratch player app on the iPhone. Here is the statement that we gave to them....

We're disappointed that Apple decided not to allow a Scratch player on the iPhone or iPad (as part of Apple's policy against apps that interpret or execute code). As we see it, there is nothing more important than empowering the next generation of kids to design, create, and express themselves with new media technologies. That's the idea behind Scratch. Kids around the world are using Scratch to program their own interactive stories, games, animations, and simulations with Scratch -- and sharing their creations with one another online. In the process, kids learn to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively. Since the launch of Scratch in 2007, kids have shared nearly 1 million projects on the Scratch website (http://scratch.mit.edu). We hope that Apple will reconsider its policies so that more kids can experience the joys of creating and sharing with Scratch. (By the way, the Scratch player for the iPhone was created by a third party, not by our group at the MIT Media Lab. But our group is planning to make Scratch authoring tools for the iPad in the future, and we hope Apple will allow us....)

Scratch 2.0

Monday, April 19, 2010

Prepared by the Scratch Team at the MIT Media Lab for the Digital Media and Learning Competition


Scratch & Share: Collaborating with Youth to Develop the Next Generation of Creative Software





In todayʼs rapidly changing world, people must continually come up with creative solutions to unexpected problems. So it is essential for young people to have access to tools, opportunities, and support to develop as creative thinkers.

That was our core motivation in developing Scratch, a graphical programming language that empowers young people (ages 8 and up) to create their own interactive stories, games, animations, and simulations. Since its launch in 2007, the Scratch website has become a vibrant online community, with more than 400,000 registered members sharing, discussing, and remixing one another’s projects. Available free of charge, Scratch is used in homes, schools, libraries, museums, and community centers. One teacher wrote: “I have never seen students take to something so quickly or with such enthusiasm. It unlocks their creativity and empowers them.”

In online forums, children and teens have posted hundreds of creative suggestions for new features and capabilities for future versions of Scratch. Based on these suggestions, we propose to develop a new generation of Scratch, called Scratch 2.0, that will dramatically expand opportunities for young people to share ideas, collaborate on projects, and develop as creative thinkers. We will work closely with Scratch community members, providing them with ongoing opportunities to propose features, test prototypes, and share resources. New features of Scratch 2.0 will include:

• sharing Scratch projects on mobile phones, tablets, and other new platforms;
• integrating Scratch with social media, so that young people can program projects to dynamically pull content from and push updates to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and other Web 2.0 sites;
• providing infrastructure for groups of young people to collaborate on projects (including version control and collaborative annotations);
• enabling young people to program, remix, and share projects more seamlessly, all within a web browser, without any downloading or uploading.

If you are interested in discussing more about Scratch 2.0, we encourage you to post your comment on our DML Competition Entry.