a project, the site automatically adds a
link back to the original project, so the
original author gets credit. Also, each
project includes links to its “derivatives”
(projects remixed from it), and the “Top
Remixed” projects are featured prominently on the Scratch homepage.
Some projects focus on the site itself, providing reviews and analyses of
other projects there. One early example
was called SNN, for Scratch News Network, featuring the Scratch cat (the
default character in Scratch) delivering
news about the Scratch community,
much like a CNN anchor. At first, we
saw it as a “simulated newscast” but
then realized it was a real newscast,
providing news of interest to a real
community—the Scratch online community. The SNN project inspired others, leading to a proliferation of online
newsletters, magazines, and TV shows,
all programmed in Scratch, reporting
on the Scratch community.
Other Scratchers formed online
“companies,” working together to create projects that their individual members could not have produced on their
own. One company got its start when
a 15-year-old girl from England, with
screen name BeeBop, created a project
full of animated sprites and encouraged
others to use them in their projects or
place special requests for custom-made
sprites. She was setting up a no-fee consulting business. A 10-year-old girl, also
from England, with screen name Mu-sicalMoon, liked BeeBop’s animations
and asked if she’d be willing to create
a background for one of her projects.
This collaboration gave rise to Mesh
Inc., a self-proclaimed “miniature company” to produce “top quality games”
in Scratch. A few days later, a 14-year-
old boy from New Jersey, screen name
Hobbit, discovered the Mesh Inc. gallery and offered his services, saying,
“I’m a fairly good programmer, and I
could help with debugging and stuff.”
Later, an 11-year-old boy from Ireland,
with screen name Marty, was added to
the Mesh Inc. staff due to his expertise
in scrolling backgrounds.
Such collaborations open opportunities for many different types of learning.
Here’s how a 13-year-old girl from California, who started a Scratch company
called Blue Elk Productions, described
her experience:
“What is fun about Scratch and
the scratch Web
site has become
a vibrant online
community, with
people sharing,
discussing, and
remixing one
another’s projects.
about organizing a company to write
games together is that I’ve made a lot of
friends and learned lots of new things.
I’ve learned a lot about different kinds
of programming by looking at other
games with interesting effects, downloading them, and looking at and modifying the scripts and sprites. I really like
programming! Also, when I started with
Scratch I didn’t think I was a very good
artist. But since then, just by looking at
other people’s art projects, asking them
questions, and practicing drawing using programs like Photoshop and the
Scratch paint editor, I’ve gotten a lot
better at art... Another thing I’ve learned
while organizing Blue Elk is how to
help keep a group of people motivated
and working together… I like Scratch
better than blogs or social networking
sites like Facebook because we’re creating interesting games and projects that
are fun to play, watch, and download. I
don’t like to just talk to other people on-line, I like to talk about something creative and new.”
To encourage international sharing and collaboration, we’ve placed a
high priority on translating Scratch into
multiple languages. We created an infrastructure that allows the Scratch programming blocks to be translated into
any language with any character set. A
global network of volunteers has provided translations for more than 40 languages. Children around the world now
share Scratch projects with one another,
each viewing the Scratch programming
blocks in their own language.
future Directions
A growing number of K– 12 schools
around the world, and even some universities (including Harvard and the
University of California, Berkeley),
8 use
Scratch as a first step into programming.
A natural question is What comes next?
In the Scratch discussion forums, there
are ongoing debates about what programming language should be used after Scratch. We receive many requests to
add more advanced features to Scratch
(such as object inheritance and recursive list structures), hoping that Scratch
itself could be the “next step.”
We plan to keep our primary focus
on lowering the floor and widening the
walls, not raising the ceiling. For some
Scratchers, especially those who want to
pursue a career in programming or com-