[music] abhi2006: I'm pretty sure my first project was a ball moving.
From there I just added it from a ball I just made a chicken moving and then after that I made a horse
moving. And then I slowly started making a talking animation.
Right now I'm working on ten projects. I'm working on three games and seven animations. Um, one project
I'm really working on a lot is called HashtagHashbrowns, it's another show I'm making.
I just love it so much, it's really great.
Mitch: Scratch is both a programming language and an online community where kids can create their interactive
stories and games and animations, and then share their creations with one another online.
In the process kids learn to think creatively, reason systemically, and work collaboratively, skills that are
important to everyone in today's society. We made it more accessible by making the programming language
graphical so that kids could create programs just by snapping graphical blocks together like LEGO bricks.
Natalie: What we've learned from young people who've participated in Scratch for a long time is what really
motivates them is being able to explore and figure things out for themselves. So Scratch is really designed
for young people to snap together these blocks and see what does it do so just like building with LEGO or
other bricks, it doesn't give you and error message to say, no that's not right or doesn't tell you what to do
it let's you create something that you imagined, that maybe no one else has ever imagined. And in that
process they're learning a lot of different skills - they're learning mathematical and computational concepts.
Even more importantly is they're learning how do carry out a project from you're very basic idea to making it a
reality.
Kasia: What started as a kind of as an experimental smaller community on the internet has become the
world's largest online programming community for kids. And so we have hundreds of millions of users that come
to us every year and people in every single country in the world are using Scratch right now. And it also means
being able to reach kids who can't afford a lot of technology or programs and so Scratch is free and is
available to everyone.
Will: I have Ari, I have Verity, and then I also have Audra...
You know Scratch is just used almost constantly, almost every day by kids here for various projects.
scratchv54: The animations are really fun to make. Like you could make a fish that swims or you could
make a fish that throws a dance party, it just depends on what you want the program to do.
Rosa: I like the idea that you don't have to be an expert, that you don't have to be like a computer coding genius
to begin a conversation about computer science.
Sarah: Scratch was the first programming that I had ever done and it got me really interested in programming.
And in high school I started to explore other programming languages in addition to Scratch like
Python and Java and from that exploration I decided that I wanted to study computer science in college.
I wasn't thinking - oh I want to program, I was thinking I want to make something, how do I makes something
well I'm going to make something and so for me Scratch was a tool that let me make whatever I could imagine.
Mitch: Our work on Scratch built upon the LOGO programming language that was developed by
Seymour Papert and his colleagues back in the 1960's and 70's. We were inspired by LOGO but we wanted to
bring it into the 21st century. We made more meaningful by allowing kids to bring in different media
images, and sounds, record their own voices. And we made it more social, integrating Scratch into an
online community where kids could share their work with one another.
Eric: Something we strive for on the Scratch online community is to make sure that it's welcoming to
people of all backgrounds. All ages, races, religions, sexual orientations, gender identities. We want to make
sure that this is a space where people can share projects about topics that are important to themselves.
forever-: I have a multi-animator project that, to the song Hands. [music]
that we as Scratchers made together after the Orlando tragedy that happened. And I thought that
we should do something about it but I didn't know what we could do about it...
and I thought why couldn't we as Scratchers create something together? [music]
Andrew: Something that's central to the experience of Scratch is that kids can see themselves as creators
of games, not just consumers of games.
So when you're playing on your phone, all of a sudden you can make something for your phone.
When you're playing on your video game console, all of sudden you can make something for your video
game console that somebody else can play. My hope for future versions of Scratch is we can continue
to keep the child at the center of what we do and that we can continue to reach more and more children in
in the powerful ways that we already have.
Mitch: Our ultimate goal with Scratch is to help all children, from all backgrounds to become truly fluent
with new technologies.
We want to help all children be able to design, create, invent, express themselves with new technology.
That's going to be needed to become a full and active participant in tomorrow's society.