Build-in-Progress is a new platform for people to document and share DIY projects that are still works-in-progress. The website encourages designers to share their designs as they are under development, showcasing the trials and errors that naturally occur throughout the design process. This is in contrast to existing platforms, which tend to present users with edited recipes for replicating existing projects. Build-in-Progress also has a companion mobile app for enabling designers to easily share media associated with their projects.

At Computer Clubhouse after-school centers, young people (ages 10-18) from low-income communities learn to express themselves creatively with new technologies. Clubhouse members work on projects based on their own interests, with support from adult mentors. By creating their own animations, interactive stories, music videos, and robotic constructions, Clubhouse members become more capable, confident, and creative learners. The first Computer Clubhouse was established in 1993, as a collaboration between the Lifelong Kindergarten group and The Computer Museum (now part of the Boston Museum of Science). With financial support from Intel Corporation, the network has expanded to more than 20 countries, serving more than 20,000 young people. The Lifelong Kindergarten group continues to develop new technologies, introduce new educational approaches, and lead professional-development workshops for Clubhouses around the world.

In Family Creativity Workshops, we engage parents and their children in workshops to design and invent together with Scratch, a programming language that allows people to create their own interactive animations, games, and stories. Just as children's literacy can be supported by parents reading with them, children's creativity can be supported by parents creating with them. Children who learn to create with technologies like Scratch often come from homes with strong support systems. In these workshops, we especially target families with limited access to resources and social support around technology. By promoting participation across generations, these creative workshops engage parents in supporting their children in becoming creators and full participants in today’s digital society.

More and more computational activities revolve around collecting, accessing, and manipulating large sets of data, but introductory approaches for learning programming typically are centered around algorithmic concepts and flow of control, not around data. Computational exploration of data, especially data-sets, has been usually restricted to predefined operations in spreadsheet software like Microsoft Excel. This project builds on the Scratch programming language and environment to allow children to explore data and datasets. With the extensions provided by this project, children can build Scratch programs to not only manipulate and analyze data from online sources, but also to collect data through various means such as surveys and crowd-sourcing. This toolkit will support many different types of projects like online polls, turn-based multiplayer games, crowd-sourced stories, visualizations, information widgets, and quiz-type games.

Map Scratch is an extension of Scratch that enables kids to program with maps within their Scratch projects. With Map Scratch, kids can create interactive tours, games, and data visualizations with real-world geographical data and maps.

Learning for everyone, by everyone. The Open Learning project builds online learning communities that work like the web: peer-to-peer, loosely joined, open. And it works with Media Lab faculty and students to open up the magic of the Lab through online learning. Our first experiment was Learning Creative Learning, a course taught at the Media Lab, which attracted 24,000 participants. We are currently developing ideas for massive citizen science projects, engineering competitions for kids, and new physical infrastructures for learning that reclaim the library.

Sanctuary is an educational game to be played in pairs. It addresses topics in high-school biology and mathematics, and encourages players to become collaborative scientists with asymmetric interfaces and tools.

Scratch Day (day.scratch.mit.edu) is a network of face-to-face local gatherings, on the same day in all parts of the world, where people can meet, share, and learn more about Scratch, a programming environment that enables people to create their own interactive stories, games, animations, and simulations. We believe that these types of face-to-face interactions remain essential for ensuring the accessibility and sustainability of initiatives such as Scratch. In-person interactions enable richer forms of communication among individuals, more rapid iteration of ideas, and a deeper sense of belonging and participation in a community. The first Scratch Day took place on May 16, 2009, with 120 events in 44 different countries. In 2012, there were 186 events in 44 countries.