Boing Boing posts a TEDx talk from Mitch Resnick, of the MIT Media Lab, and creator of Scratch, and a good discussion ensued: “Kids should learn programming as well as reading and writing”. Make sure to watch the talk as well: “Reading, Writing, and Programming: Mitch Resnick at TEDxBeaconStreet”
Tag Archives: scratch
New Book: “Super Scratch Programming Adventure!”
I recently read about no starch press’s “Super Scratch Programming Adventure!” from a post at boingboing and had to purchase a copy. The book looks as terrific in person as it does in the discussion at boingboing. My daughter was happy to see the book when it came in the mail. I’m looking forward to starting to read it with her and try some of its projects. Check it out.
It’s more than just Dart – recent language development: on coding
Michael Fogus reviews the astonishing (to the unfamiliar) number or new programming languages being developed these past 5 years from Scratch to CoffeeScript, to Dart, it is quite a list.
New Version of Sikuli released
MIT’s Project Sikuli has released a new version with some IDE and API improvements.
Sikuli, along with Scatch open up programming in innovative and fun ways.
Four Videos on Changing Our Notions About Education
Dr. Tae: “Building A New Culture Of Teaching And Learning”:
TED.com: “Dave Eggers’ wish: Once Upon A School”
TED.com: “Alan Kay shares a powerful idea about ideas”:
TED.com: “Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity”:
Metafilter Thread: Scratch, a beginner’s programming language
Shamus Young: Scratch
IllustrativeProgramming
Martin Fowler coins a useful term: “Illustrative Programming”: languages that “fuse the execution of the program together with its definition”. “Illustrative programming requires information from the actual running of the program.” He uses Excel as an example.
I think MIT’s Scratch provides an example of this as well. I need to pass it along.
Scratch is fun
Emma and me played around with Scratch the other day. It really does live up to its billing as a Lego-like environment to write programs in (especially where simple animations are concerned).
You might think that introducing a 3 year old to programming is a bit overboard – but this is just another set of Lego bricks.
Which is perfect.
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