Scratch

Intuit sponsors an annual Take Our Kids to Work Day. This year I held a 2 hour Scratch session with 4 kids in attendance, ages 11-14, two boys and two girls. We also had some others wander in, including an 8 year old brother of one of the kids who is now programming his own Scratch games.

I had help from Gayle R, a researcher at the Mass College of Art. It was great to have 1 educator for every 2 students. I first walked them through a simple animation. We then let them individualize their creations by picking out something from the cards (I printed out sets of cards for each student). From there, they pretty much started doing all their own things with occasional assistance from me or Gayle.

The setup was also very helpful: I had 4 laptops with Scratch, each online with LogMeIn installed. I could log in to each student and help them with a particular task. My computer was connected to a projector, so I could show them things by example, and I could put their creations up on the big screen to show everyone else.

In the end, we had to drag all but one of them away from their computers to go eat lunch. Even my 14 year old daughter got home that night and started creating more Scratch applications.