Mitchel Resnick: "Scratch: Coding for Everyone!" | Talks at Google

Mitchel. Resnick is a professor, of learning research, at, the MIT Media Lab, where. He develops new technologies, and activities to engage people, especially. Children and creative, learning experiences. His. Research team called, the lifelong kindergarten, group develops. The scratch programming, software and, online community, the, world's largest coding, platform, for kids, his. Group also collaborates, with the Lego company on the, development, of new educational, ideas and products, including. Lego, Mindstorms. Robotics kits. Mitchell. Co-founded. The computer Clubhouse project, an international. Network of a hundred after-school, centers, where. Youth from low-income communities. Learn to express themselves, creatively with. New technologies. Mitchell. And the scratch team have partnered with Google and Google org, to increase youth coding, efforts through projects, like CS first Google's. CS curriculum, for nine to fourteen year olds and blackly. Which, makes app development, more accessible, on a. Personal, note I worked, with Mitchell to develop scratch and traveled, around the world doing, scratch workshops, with children, and educators. I remember. How exciting, it was for, kids to build projects, bringing. Their creations, to life and, how, enabling, and empowering these, tools can be for those who might not otherwise have, found themselves coding. Working. With Mitchell and the scratch team helped me internalize, that. Coding did not need to be an exclusive skill, restricted. To engineers, but. Rather a tool to enable anyone, to creatively, express themselves, or to tackle personally, meaningful projects. Mitchell's. Passion, for people education. And empowerment has inspired me and countless, others and I'm excited to introduce him to, speak with you all today. Yeah. Well thanks, so much Tammy it's, great to be talking here at Google, but as scratch continues, to grow we're forming stronger. And stronger collaboration with, Google as, I'll be mentioning in the, talk so it's great to be here to talk with you and to share some of the work we're doing nail. And look ahead to some of the things return to work on May the projects, in collaboration with people here at Google, we've. Had lots of different ways we've also been. Very fortunate to be able to have feel from Google who then come and work with us I'm here with my colleague Chen pika Fernando who we stole, from Google twice she, came to work with us and visit student, went back to Google and then recently came back and started work with us there's, been lots of flow back and forth to both people and ideas and, it's been great to have the history with Tommy, so.

I Even went back into the archives and found from scratch, was launched in 2007. Ten, years ago this was the scratch team and, you can see myself there, and there's Tommy as. An, MIT she was finishing up at MIT at the time I think shortly after this then started at Google so. It's great to reconnect and, be, able to have continued, through the years to continue to share ideas. Since. Time we left the scratch team in 2007. Scratch, has continued, to grow and grow it's, like you know over the last decade, scratches. Really groans where there's, a number of people joining the scratch online communities, to this past year there were eight million, young. People who registered. In the scratch online community and, you can just see how it's been growing and growing over, the years but, I think for us which. Most important is not just the number of people involved but. To creativity, express, by them and the way destroyed transforming. Their lives and, the way that that they can you know create things and express themselves so, I want to start with the story of one. Of those millions of young people just. To give a sense of what, the experience is like for, young people when they join the scratch community. This. Is the story about a young person everyone starts with a username this. Is someone whose username was Apes a and, epsy. Described, you and if she was growing up one, of their favorite things to do was drawing and they loved to draw things and if they got started with scratch. One of if STIs friends explained. That, scratch was a way to make your drawings come alive and that was really intriguing for MC Sipsey, tried out scratch and this was one of the first projects. That they worked on and scratch and. What I like about this as you can see it's if she's drawing it's just a little bit of animation, you see the ears are wiggling and the eyes are moving, and, you, can almost see here hypsi starting. With something that they're comfortable with and like dipping, their toe in the water to try something new so, there's the scratch programming.

For, Those who haven't seen it with scratch you build up programs by stacking together graphical, programming blocks this. Is one of empties first you know program some project, as a way to start exploring, to testing something new and if, she found that they really enjoyed working, on these types of projects, to start spending more time on scratch a little, while later this. Is a project you really got Epson known in the community you can see if these projects, got more and more sophisticated this. Is a project that if she worked on called lemonade time and in, this project you can use the arrow keys, to move the otter and as, the art moves around the otter gets tips from different animals, that the auditor comes across the bird the Frog and the goal is to to. Be able to get all the ingredients to make lemonade, yet, to get the ideas for get, instructions. And that end tips on where to get the water the lemons the sugar to, make lemonade, so. If she put this in the online community and it became really popular so. If you go to the online community you can still see this this is the page for lemonade time and you, can see it was viewed seventeen thousand times it. Was loved close to 2000 times it. Was remixed, 88, times because, in scratch anybody. Can take a project and then, make modifications to, it changing. The images, changing, the code it's all sort of an open-source culture around scratch everything, that is shared is covered by Creative Commons so, as long as you give credit you, can remix other people's projects, so, 88 people made remix, projects, illuminated time nearly. 2,000. People 1830. People gave comments, give me suggestions, or feedback or, encouragement, and you, can tell that if C was, listening, to these comments, and reading them carefully, because if you look in the instructions, here it says edit. Due to popular demand the otter walks, a little faster, now so. Like any good designer if season you know listening to the audience and making changes, you know based on what comes across a lot, of the comments were, about if sees artwork, people really like tip C's artwork and several, people said we'd love to see more of your artwork and you you share more of your artwork so, if she started putting up some projects, like this one. Branded. A zip C studio and, it's. A collection of different. Artwork. That. If she's sharing with the rest of the community and if C Road you can edit them as much as you want you must credit me if you use any of these sprites, spread, to the objects, in scratch and, this is scented if she was learning how to be a good member of the online community and sort of understanding, this idea of sharing, under, Creative Commons and this was definitely an evolution, for epsy as it is for many members of the community at, first if she was upset when.

People Were, you know taking their projects, and Andry mixing them or using them in different ways or taking characters, feeling, that's my character they shouldn't be able to do it but, over time if she came to recognize that when everyone shares everyone. Benefits, and, this sign that you are team, we are in constant communication with people in the community trying to help people understand, this but it is a constant, sometimes. We say learning how to share is even more difficult than learning how to code so. That's the real thing that I think a lot of kids are learning but. You know if she was doing this but then you notice it continued, to do it can't with all sorts of different things here is you know even a tutorial, that if she did showing how to make scrolling, backgrounds, you saw it in the lemonade time that. The background was scrolling behind. The other characters, you move the Aadhaar it's, not so easy to make scrolling backgrounds, of scratch like we're trying to figure how to make it easier but it's not so easy but. If she figured out how to do it and they made this tutorial, showing. How to do it then even commented, the code showing people how to do it this. Is again something that took us by surprise when. We imagined, that we, would do tutorials and some teachers, would do tutorials which, took us by surprise is, that so, many kids want to do tutorials so. If you go to the scratch website there are thousands, and thousands of tutorials, done, by kids how to do scrolling, you know how to use variables, how, to use the vector paint editor how to make your projects popular, scratch you, appeal to tutorials, about everything, so. It's time that we just people are using the community in so many different ways so. I think just, by looking these projects, you can see what if C is taking away from participating. In the community I think, you, what, we see is FC is really developing as a creative, thinker and, we think that's more important today than ever before for us it's not just about learning, decoding skills although clearly if, you look at you know that's scrolling back on if she's clearly earning of learning some coding skills but, for us what's most important, is that if she's really learning to think creatively and. I think that's more important today than ever before you, know we live in a world that's changing so quickly, that, we don't know exactly what, skills kids will need in the future as they grow up but. We know they're gonna need to be able to come up with creative solutions, to the unexpected, things they confront, because they will be confronting, all sorts of unexpected and, new, situations and. We think that's what's happening, you know with with young, people like Epps a there, to try to support, that development, of creative thinking we. Developed scratch with four guiding principles. That. We call them the four PS of creative learning projects. Passion, peers and play so, with everything we do whether it's developing scratch or running a workshop or, giving. Advice to parents about what toys to get for their kids we're always guided, by thinking about these four p's because, it's a good framework for think about how you can really help, support creative, thinking, so.

And You if you look at scratch you can see that it really is aligned. And guided by these four, pieces of creative learning the. First one projects. We saw if C was just constantly making projects, and the scratch website is, based, on projects, it's the core unit of sharing, on scratch there's, 30 million projects, that kids have shared now. It might seem obvious if you look at scratch is a well of course they're working on projects, but. That's not the way most kids learn to code go. To most coding websites and kids are given a puzzle. Or a problem to solve to, get the answer and, then they're moved on to a next puzzler problem, and again. When, I was 10 years old I would have enjoyed doing that a lot of kids enjoyed doing it and you can learn some computational, concepts, that way there's, nothing wrong with that but. If you really want to develop as a creative, thinker it's, not just a matter of learning how to solve a certain puzzle, but, being able to do, a project and with a project I mean to start with your own idea to, develop you know some prototype. With it to show it to others to experiment. With it to get feedback to keep revising, it to have a way of expressing, your ideas to the world so, if the project kids, they aren't just developing, their thinking, but also developing their voice you're coming with an idea and expressing, their ideas to the world so, we really try to see scratches it's like a type of writing, the same way when you learn to write is not just to get a task done but, it's a way of expressing your ideas we, see scratch the same way as kids, work on projects, and there's second P of passion. I think we all know that we're. All willing to work longer and harder and, persist. In the face of challenges. We, work on something we really care deeply about. So. For us it's so important, to give kids the opportunity to, work on things they really care about so. As we were developing scratch, we want to make sure that you could do many different things with that because, we know different kids have different interests. And different passions, and we want to make sure to align with the interests of all different kids I mean some people suggested, well why don't you do it see all you do is to make games kids like games and it's true lots of kids like games what.

About Kids you don't like games and they wouldn't be interested in it we, want to make sure the kids can make games but it can also make animations. And simulations. And and interactive. Stories, because, different kids have different interests we want to let all kids build, on things they really wanted to want to do and you can see that a nip C's case you, were empty with you withdrew, it was building, upon their interest in drawing and use that as a way to get into coding, with. Peers, we. Saw from the beginning that. We really wanted to make sure that learning, to code was a social, experience, did, too often when people think of coding, they think of the individual, sitting, mule, by themselves, looking at the screen and of course you spend some time doing that and you, know sometimes that's an important, part of the process we. Know that a lot of learning happens, in collaboration. With others so. When we launch scratch we, launched the online community, at the same time, integrated. With the programming, language, and to us that was really important, a lot of people you know they weren't quite sure what we were doing because why, do you have to have an online community with a programming, language but. For us the, online community both served as a source of it, was a. Way to have an audience for what you created because, when you create, something you want to be able to share ideas with others and get feedback as we saw epsy getting feedback it. Also serves as a source of inspiration you. Can look at the online community, and you see again, millions of projects, that gives you ideas, of what you want to create so. We want to have a way that we have, kids connect with each other they would learn with and from one, another both to get feedback and inspiration, from one another and. Then finally play and I. Sometimes call played the most misunderstood. Of the peas because. People hear playing there just think oh it's, about laughing having, fun and, there's. Not wrong with laughing and having fun but. We think of play in a different way we see it almost as an attitude. Or an approach to the things you're doing when, you have a playful, approach it means you're willing to take risks, to try new things to test the boundaries, to experiment. And. We wanted to make sure that was possible, so we've really set up scratch, so it's easy to put. Things together take, them apart you can make prep you, know your programs some like building with Lego bricks LEGO bricks are so tink rubble and you can play, with them try new things take it apart try something else continually, iterate and we want to make scratch really easy to iterate to you can keep experimenting, so. That's what we did and try to make it and we also in moderating, the community to make sure the community is a, type. Of place where you feel safe experimenting. Trying new things so. These four peas have guided, you know the things that we're doing and from. This I think this really underlies, your house why scratch has been growing over the last ten years and really, is you know grown you, know beyond what we would have imagined, so last year there were 200.

Million Unique visitors, to, scratch then, not all there were creating projects, about 10 percent about 20 million people created, projects, but people just visiting, and trying out scratch, it's things about 200 million unique visitors. You, know every country in the world from. The beginning we want to translate to many different languages, so it's easy to make the blocks switch, to whatever language you want and, even if you see someone else's. Project the project that was done in New. York a child. And Tokyo could look at it and switch the blocks to, two Japanese, make a change to it and a child in Buenos Aires could then change the blocks to Spanish, too, facilitate, collaboration, by everyone change it to their own language, forty-five, percent female, hundreds. And everything is free that the software is free the community, is free it's, also open source so, we've really tried to build. It with all the development has done an open source way where and we, have people helping out we've really appreciative a bunch, of people of Google of help dialed we did an initiative last year through Google serve and people helped out we hope as we continue, to develop others. Helping us out and every. Day there's 150,000. New projects, the kids are creating, in the, scratch community. Who's. Creating, them this is a histogram, of the ages, that people join the community the peak is at age 12 and this, pretty much hits what we'd aimed for when, we develop scratch we aimed at age 8 to 16 and that's roughly where, you know the the bulk of the people are after, scratch, came out we did another version called scratch junior which, is your ages 5 to 7, at the lower end one, thing that took us by surprise is, there's more use at the higher end and we imagined, because, even though we designed for 8 to 16 it's. Getting used in a growing number of introductory, computer science courses at universities. Sometimes. For a whole semester sometimes. Just to get to get started, like at Harvard they, use it as the first week of the.

Introductory. Computer science course there's cs50. And they, found that when they shifted over to doing scratch in the beginning the, number of people drop in the course well went down dramatically. Especially. Among women they used to have a huge dropout rates of women, and at least they speculated, with scratch people were able to have a success. Rate quickly, and get a sense of what's possible and what type of things they might do with scratch and then, after it's in that course they do shift to other things biscotti serves as a foundation for getting people started, you. Know within, the use of scratch when it started, 10 years ago a lot of it was being used in homes. And after-school centers right, now the fastest, growth is in schools there's a lot of you, you know and that's partly isn't it's a cultural, phenomena that more schools, are getting interested in introducing coding, so scratch is being used in in many different schools here in New York it's, one of the you, know the language, that's really being used, especially in elementary schools, with, the, different efforts and see us for all efforts, is really supporting, the use of scratch going, out to schools I want to give you some sense of how it's being used in schools so show a few examples of things that we've seen in different schools the. First ones from India, this. One is from Bangalore, where. This, was I think was a 13 year old it, was in the science class where. They were studying the layers of the earth so. As the final project but they were making scratch, projects, about what they learned to share what they learned about the layers the earth so, the teacher explained, to us that, this student you speak in his native language of Kannada. And he's, explaining the different layers the earth in every language he, was really excited about was the fact that things are moving inside are so, he's playing things are moving and you see it gets down to the wood or table or things are moving and put some sound effects. For. The wood a table, so. It's got a way of sharing. So. This is a case where scratch was actually introduced at school and everyone was using it sometimes.

Kids, Learn scratch at home but bring it into school that's the next example, this, is from a middle. School in the United States where they were studying in a social, studies class dropping. Rapa Nui or Easter Island. The island off of South America, and this. Dude did something sort of like sim city but, sim Rapa Nui he, had learned about the economy, and the culture, and you. Know fishing is important to the economy so to survive there you have to cut down a branch to make a fishing rod and go fishing, but, if you take down too many branches the God happiness, goes down because there's, certainly no way, that they respect the environment so, as a way for him to show what he had learned but also to help other people learn about robbing no way I'll. Show one more example from elementary, school and this. Is an elementary school I really like these examples, where it's used across the curriculum so this elementary, school teacher introduced. To scratch in, the same way that if you learn about you learn how to write use writing in all of your classes whether its history or science, you use, your writing everywhere that you scratch everywhere, in, this clay this is an example from, a book report when they read Charlotte's, Web that. This was one of the students book reports, and you can see they're using language, you know they'd read the book and they're writing about the. Book but one thing that caught my attention with, this example is notice how the pig gets smaller, as it, goes further away so. This was also using what they learned in art class about perspective. That to make something look further away you make a smaller, now, if you look at the code in. Order to make it smaller what, this do not to do is multiply it by a fraction multiply. The size by a fraction less than one repeatedly. To make it smaller and smaller and smaller so. Is learning mathematical. Ideas while, doing that but. Again using mathematic, ideas with a purpose, so there's a reason you know that they knew why they were learning multiplying, fractions most, kids you're. Talking multiply fractions you think, why am i learning this but. Here they were learning multiplying, fractions for a purpose, there was a reason for doing and they can make good use of it here, actually. Right before this talk though before this talk I was talking to max it was really happy he came he, was telling me about it in his third grade they, were making games where they had to show, some things about rocks, and minerals. Other people learned something they didn't know before about rocks and minerals I think that's another sort of great example, I think, there was just recently he was doing that and that's. A way of sort of using scratched as a way of communicating. And sharing with one another so I think we see more and more of that happening. So. In our collaboration with Google we also doing a lot aiming at schools you know with Google's CS first program, it's an after-school initiative, but increasing. Being focused on schools so we see that as a great collaboration, and we're, really pleased to see us first got started, they. Chose scratch, as the primary programming, language so we've worked with them and it's been great to see the way that they have, built all sorts of resources, around scratch, so, those types of collaborations, are really important for us because, we have a relatively small team we have language out there but the CS first team is the, great job of creating all sorts of resources around it and supporting. Both the mentors, and facilitators. Running these sessions, and also, developing the materials for kids to use as well so, we're really looking forward to doing that, let. Me give. One more extended, example of one, where and we, see this happening a lot we're of someone. Who starts, to learn scratch to school but he continues, doing things outside of school and that also makes us really happy actually I was at an event, in New York City actually, as during CS ed week in December, I was down here and it was this de CS for all people had an event, that I went to and there, I met a couple high school students, and was. Talking them and they'd they, weren't using scratch anymore they'd used in elementary, in middle school but, what I really liked is they said what they liked about scratch was they said it was the one thing they did at school they wanted to continue to do on their own after school and for, us I think everything, should be that way so everything we develop we try to make it the kids would want to do on their own and.

That Was the case this, is another member of the scratch community this. Bubble 103, is her username. She's, from South Africa, and she first learned about scratch. In school where this is one of the projects, if you go to our website to the profile. You can see the water cycle and it shows how you, know that that. You know the word from the from, the lake or the ocean goes, up and makes a cloud that goes and it rains so it's talking about the water cycle but, she learned that she then started making games on her own there's a fabulous farming. Game that she made she. Made a presentation. About South Africa she was really proud of South Africa, and she went to share her pride with other people, in the community and she also made tutorials, like if she did and this one view that, you know bub wanna thread used barrels and she was excited about what you could do with variables, and want to share that with others but. The project that really caught our attention and. A lot of people's attention was. A project that she worked on called color divide and, this, was a collaborative, project that she did with five or six other scratchers. There were like in three or four other countries so they started. Exchanging, ideas, in, the online community and bubble. 103 it started, this role-playing game, with others, and then decided, to make a trailer, for a movie that, they wanted to make about color divide so. I'll, show you now they go one-minute clip this trailer, that they did this, has done five, different scratchers, working together to. Put together that's, the the trailer, for a color divide. Welcome. To Aurora land, of color and magic, every. Child at the age of twelve faces, the test to determine their magical, strength and their, color rank but. All is not as it seems, this, test means everything, to me I can't fail what. If I don't get a color I don't, want to color anyways I'm, going to. But. Banishment. Haven't, you ever wondered what's out there I mean there's, got to be something I got too close to the gates box and I saw something a boy. I hate living in this place, The Magicians are big potatoes, they told my family apart. They destroyed they destroyed my home and burn. Together. Will. Fail this test. Let's, see what your lives. So. I think. One thing that really struck us with this is the, fact obviously, observed a big programming, effort they spent a lot of time doing this but, you can really see that for Bubba 103, there, was sort of a deep meaning, behind this, you know talking about growing up in South Africa, talk about this color divide and everyone being given a color and being ranked, by your color so, we, then talk to her and. She says growing up I've definitely seen the scars that apartheid is left on my country and the people I'm, really exploring, that through the different characters, they're part of this story and, again we see, this over and over a lot of the, kids are using scratch or oftentimes as they go into their teen years they're, spoiling things about their own identity, things about the community around them so you see them tackling issues that are deeply important, to them of. Course there's a lot of things don't scratch there the funny animations, but it also is an opportunity for kids to really develop, you know their own ideas, to share ideas with others as use it as a way to to.

Sort Through important, ideas and also, to sort through ways, of engaging with, the design process in the creative process so. Bubble 103 also, said she said because of scratch I've become more confident, to try new things to express myself I'm more comfortable with taking risks and making mistakes now. When something goes wrong I see it as an opportunity to learn something new and again. That's what we were hoping for with scratch when I talked about the appoints of play an, our mind is a playful, approach a willingness to take risks a willingness, tap things go wrong I've been, then an ability to, try to iterate, and to to, debug things when things go wrong did to try new things and that's. Exactly what she was getting out of this so really happy week here scratches, talked this way and she. Bubbling at three also talked about the importance of the online community, for her she, said I've been constantly blown away by the kind of support and collaboration, and sharing that, happens in the community that's one of the main things that keeps me coming back to scratch every day and we. See that over, and over that for a lot of kids they come to scratch to, create a project they stay for the community, they connect with other people the way they share with each other in this case collaborating. With others you, on on, projects, interacting. And getting inspired by others, and. I think it's not an accident that this example happens, to come from a young woman of the community. Just, last night this is I've been my freshest, data just, last night one of the graduate students in our group, Shruti Darwin was, talking about showing some of the latest data should looking at about some, gender you, know differences, on scratch, as I mentioned it's, about forty five percent female. The scratch population. One. Thing we'd already seen was that if you look at the number of project that people create the, you, know the, boys and girls from scratch each create roughly the same number of projects, protrude, to is just looking at the data and saw the following, as far as on the social, side of scratch if, you like a project you can give it a love if you look on the left-hand side here you see that did, the. Female, participants in scratch are much, more likely they give 50% more, loves than, others so on average, each female participant gives 12 loves only, eight for male participants.

It Started giving comments and other projects, female, participants, 28 male, 16, almost twice and, for. Me I found this really, striking. Because we'd, already seen and, looking at the community the, getting social feedback on the community is the most important, determinant about, whether someone stays on scratch so. When someone puts up a project. On scratch how, quickly they receive some, social feedback a comment, or love has, a huge, influence on where they make a second, project so. The fact that the young women on scratch are, doing much more Compton and loving really. Shows the important, role they're playing to help continue. The people working on scratch so, and it really shows how the creative, side and the community side of scratch really, are tightly linked with one another so, this sign that we continue to look at I think right, now we're sitting on top of this huge trove of data because we know there's you know 30 million projects, on scratch and you know we've saved everything so we're still sorting through to try to learn more about the creative process and the coding process as we, sort through this on scratch I. Want. To end by giving some examples looking, ahead about, the next generation, of scratch through work mods we're now working on a third generation of scratch called. Scratch 3.0. That will launch this this, August. The. First generation of scratch that came out in 2007, was. A downloadable. Application do. You did locally used locally. And then you could share on the. Website, where the community was if you saw something in the community looked interesting yet to download, it to see the code and play, with the code the. Second generation scratch in 2013. Was. All in the, browser so you can start authoring, in the browser, and that really led to a real growth of scratch it really will it. Made it removed. A lot of the friction between. Creating. And sharing so. You can sort of see things the community go inside right away see that right online see. The proceedeth, code manipulate. The code try different things so, really opened, up to really led to some, of the recent, growth and scratch, the. Third generation are coming out now one. Of the motivations for it is to make it much, better suited for mobile, you, know back in around 2010. Or so for scratch as we started working on Scotch, 2.0, we, made the decision to implement it in flash which. At the time seemed, like a good decision right now that is not looking so good so we really need to be moving it to a new infrastructure, so scratch, new point-o be all html5, based be, much more designed with mobile, and mind so, that's one thing we want to do and we, sort of need to do we, also want to make it much, more of a basic. A platform. That, can be extended, in all sorts of different ways and this is something again we've been unlocked collaboration. With Google for. The programming, language. Itself we've been working with the blockly team and building, on the infrastructure, of blockly. From here but. Then using some of the design ideas we've had from scratch we've had the great collaboration working together on the, new, set of blocks. That we were using you, know for, this and these, blocks again are open source as blockly has been so, in addition to using these box in our scratch 3.0, we. Want to have this as a standard, you know grammar for. A block based program that anybody, can embed in their own apps, or toys or whatever products, they have so, we're trying to make this sort of a standard programming. Grammar for everybody but, then we'll also use it inside our own you know version of scratch, scratch. 3.0. Another. Way in which we're extending a scratch and make it more modular is, make. It much easier to extend, scratch so, in addition to the core capabilities. Of scratch we're, having a whole what we called the extension, mechanism to. Make it easy for pill to add new scratch blocks, so. Of course we. Wanted maybe we want to have it so that we can extend scratch we also want to let everybody else extend, scratch as well so. Now this. Is not an essay most, kids won't do this but there's more developers. Can, add their own scratch blocks and there's, a way down here just in the interface if you just want to add an extension you, can go down to the bottom left corner add an extension let, me give you some examples, how to do it so I'm actually gonna run some things live here, from, a from. The prototype of scratch 3.0. Sorry. There it is. So. This is one this is using the, extension with the micro bed a lot of Europe right familiar with the microwave is a very low, cost interface, device. And. So. Here's the board it's very you know it's sign that if the BBC helped. In developing this they've gave to every school child in England is now spaying the United States the only cost like you know less, than $20. To get the board and. What we're doing now is so, you can do, something like this and.

Notice, Is I so. Here it's using the, these. Extra blocks as just saying this has an accelerometer so when it's tilted it's. Both make the flowers, spin and it has a little, smiley face shows up on here, so. You can see that the code you, know there we. Just wanna make it easy for anybody so again we work with the micro bit team but, we want to let anybody who's making new types of hardware be, able to extend it so we're working with the Lego company so, as they add new robotics kits they'll be using scratch, and just having extensions, to their, both use, the scratch blocks and their own apps but, also will have extensions, in the scratch 3.0, where, you can control your Lego robotics, we're. Also working some of our own hardware, extensions. So, this. Is one the right now we're calling the scratch bit it's in development one. Of the graduate students the group craig Hanning is working with others. Including and just lewinsky is leading the whole scratch, 3.0, development, process, and a bunch of other people on developing. This. Scratch bed. Do. This oh here actually lived for this full, screen. So. Hopefully if I. So. This also has an accelerometer, and. I'm. Trying to, get. The balloons, in the tacos, and I get different points, I get two points for every talk on one point for every balloon and. It but when things get out of the way I, think. By clever I thought. There was a foreign that sound but maybe that thought there does. But. The idea is trying to make it so that it's. Very easy to take different types of physical devices, you, know like this and with, different sensors accelerometers. Light sensors, would, ever you, know buttons knobs and be able to wirelessly come here there's all Bluetooth you. Know communication. In, addition to extend get through hardware we're, not extend things on the either. To a web-based or saw or software. Side here's. An example there's already in scratch because the spirit of the type of things we're doing this. Is one that uses the camera. And. Notice. Whoops. Should. Be using the camera it's not. Okay. I hit the wrong one. Let. Me try one more time and see it. Thank you so. Here you see the minifigs, are falling. But. Where. I can do with my head. And. You know I think a big part of what we end up doing in our group. If. We see inside. We. Can take a look. And. This. Is the key block. You're very few blocks this, one just says if there's video motion on this sprite and it's, grew up by the threshold, then do something, so. Obviously. There's a huge amount of information coming from the camera I think a big thing what we do is how, can we take all that information put. It into the right building blocks but like kids use it in a meaningful way so we just did it so you see how much motion there is on your, sprite in this case if if. The minifig, is falling it sees motion in the background it then you know jumps, upwards, we. Also have it you can see what direction it is so you could you, could also do it by SWAT in one direction it can move one way or the other way but, just a few simple primitives, is what we're doing we're also in 3.0. We're extending this to do some things with object, detection. Let. Me show one other thing that we're doing. This. Is one that actually was just got added to the. Prototype. This week this is one of the ones that were working with people at Google on Todd's, a translate, feature so here's right so these are just some of the extensions. To work on now some division, one is what I was just talking about here's, a translate, one and. Notice. There's a new block let me make a bigger. So. Basically you can translate, a word to any language or. You could just have a translate, to whatever the, web browser is set to so I can make this and then would translate, things to whatever the, the person using the project, whatever their browser is set to but, if I just set it to a particular, language so I could just you, know say, well - French. So if I translate Old French, hello it says Bonjour I can, then put it inside a, say, block to have the cat say. So. Normally lips. There's. The cat sang hello but, now if I just say. Translate. Hello to French for two seconds now the cat will say bonjour and if. Instead of saying to French I say translate, hello to wherever the browser said - well then the cat will talk and whatever language the browser is set to so. These are things we're doing today again this is a great thing that came out of the collaboration, I'll show one more. Sort. Of a fake example, because this isn't actually running the prototype, so it's a little bit of a. Trick. Just to show you what we're aiming for. Again. We're working with, Google on speech, recognition block so as we know that obviously, communicate with speech is something the kids are interacting with all that all the, time now but, for us that's really important the kids don't just spend their time feeling.

It's Magical, of talking to something and. Then it talks back to you we want kids to feel that they can create things this way to want kids bill create their own speech interfaces. So. We've having some new blocks with on the speech synthesis, side we're, actually you, know say the words out loud when, this synthesized, voice but, also do, some speech recognition, so. Like here's one where if, you see the key part here it says when I hear what time is it it'll, then speak, it's party time and. Then it'll still play a certain sound so, if I say what time is that aunty, time. So. Again the real hope is that again for let kids there, to create their own type of speech interfaces, and conversational, interfaces with. These blocks and again we're still trying to figure out the exact right building blocks saying, if the key thing is making sure that we preserve. What's the, core power of. It but make it simple enough and. And. Versatile, enough that kids are able to use it in many different ways. So. Just to wrap up you, know we see lots of ways that scratch, is going to continue to do we. Scratch. Continue to get out to the world and for us we. Really we, do want to say there's a new type of fluency, it's. Something that when we teach kids to write it's, not just so that they can use writing and their jobs although people do use writing at their jobs but, they can express their ideas to the world and we see scratch the same way we want to let all kids grow up feeling, they can use the powerful technology, of their times in a way that they can express their voice express. Their ideas to the world and, to, do that we, want to keep on that focus of projects passion peers and play so there's always many new technologies, whether, it's object recognition speech, recognition, speech, synthesis, we want to keep integrating new technologies, but always in this framework of providing. Kids with creative, learning experiences, and leaving them in control so, it's not that just interacting, with things but, things where they can do it but I think that's gonna be the key to help kids Grove to become full, and active contributors. In, tomorrow's Society yeah. If you want to read more about this I did just. Finish. A book there's called lifelong kindergarten, use them the metaphor, of kindergarten, but I've been really inspired by the way kids learn in kindergarten, the idea the four peas came from observing, kids and kids in kindergarten, everything, in the class at kindergarten, that. Kids. Are building towers with blocks making pictures, with finger paints and crayons, in, the process they learn important, ideas they build a tower they learn about structure stability but. Even more important they learn about the creative process, you, know they learn how to put things together to. Experiment. To iterate, to. Often if they leave kindergarten, they end up sitting, in desks listening to lectures filling, out worksheets, and that, doesn't provide them the opportunity to continue to as creative thinkers so, they really aren't getting prepared for what's needed at today's society and. To make matters worse you, know a lot of kindergartens, today you, go in there and kids are drilling on math flashcards. And doing phonics, worksheets. Kindergarten. And, what, we want to do and what I talk about in the book is to make the rest of school the rest of life more like kindergarten, and that really inspired us with scratch so, from, kindergarten. Inspired scratch so, the book tells me more about the underlying ideas, for scratch to, do it I made just to end with one final thing, every. Year we do have, an annual, dinner in New York City that's, organized, by the scratch foundation Lisa Brian's, here is the executive director of the scratch foundation, it helps you know that. Helps support scratch, and this, year we. Honor. Two people each year and this year one, of the two people honoring is Maggie Johnson, you're from Google you know the great. Way that she serves as a champion, for so many of these causes so, it's been great climbing, with Maggie and others at Google and we have you know such admiration, respect for, what she's doing so we're honoring maggie along with David Siegel who's been a great partner, he leads a company here called to Sigma but again a great champion, for supporting, kids, and coding. And creative thinking they, wait but thank you very much I'd be happy to take some questions now. Hi. There thanks so much for the presentation very exciting, I was, wondering if you can clarify the associations. Between scratch. Blockly. And, code. Org, or any other associations. We may have heard about but confusing. At least to me yeah, so. Here's. I'll. Go a little bit of history so scratch got starting around 2007. And, there's. Some other people based on scratch that I work on other blocks related, languages, and in, fact some, of the other things that got done then inspired Block B another MIT professor.

And How Ableton, spent, a sabbatical. At Google worked with others at Google and started the blockly project. Garage. Or, at least he started App Inventor where. Which was making use of block light so it's sort of using, together some of these same block based programming, ideas but, block was being developed, separately from scratch but. It was in the same spirit, as we started work on scratch 3.0, we decided, to join forces because he saw that each of us could gain from working together do. We had lots of experience, of how to make. These blocks really. Work. Well with kids so we had a lot more experience working, with kids with, a block big group, had a great experience, and great expertise. In making a great infrastructure, for these blocks based languages, so we saw we each outside to gain from working with one another so we've joined forces so. Basically, our new. Version of scratch, blocks is building on top of block light, so our scratch knees are now on top of Block B it's a fork off a block they block Li continues to be developed and we're tape, building on top of that and making, it specialized, especially, for kids. Code.org. Which. Is a separate organization as a separate site this focused. On getting kids engaged with coding and CS education. They. Have, used block lean a lot of their activities, too they've put a lot of activities, online, of. Their own some, which use, block Li so block a gets used by many other sites. Code. Ogre also features, many other, types, of activities by others so our work with scratch sometimes will get featured on the code org site so, code org is served this general site that, has their own activities. Some of them based on block they but also they feature especially it's a said week other coding, activities. Hopefully. I gave some sense thank you. Hi. Thanks, a lot for being here my, previous job before I was here was as a k12 math and coding teacher and. I used scratch in the classroom but this was right around with 2.0 came out before you had a lot of the classroom management tools, that I think you've added in the past few years and. I'm just curious that scratch moves into a lot of classrooms as you noted with, cs4 all in other programs, I'm curious how you feel about like you mentioned the projects on the one hand and sort of the flashcards and the drilling on the other hand like how, do you feel about scratch being sort of molded to fit into like a mandatory classroom, environment, where people are interested in you, know defined, learning metrics senior progress assessments, and things like that yeah it's, a good question and I mean I do think we want to make sure that as scratch moves into schools that, what we what we love most about scratch doesn't get squeezed out of it and I think there ways of doing that but so I think we're all constantly, working. On and working with educators to feel whether the best ways of introducing, scratch into, classrooms, and maintaining. The spirit of scratch one, of my former students, who's now a professor at Harvard Graduate, School of Education Karen. Brennan has done a great job of this she's made a curriculum, called, the creative, computing curriculum guide it's, based on scratch but, it is very new it's showing how to make use of it in classroom settings so, that's one example of how that of, trying to take the, scratch program language but, introduced in a way that which they say is true the values but still is aligned with you, know the needs of classrooms, so, there are many you know others work on that as well so I think scratch, and other languages, are getting introduced in many different ways our. Hope is is to try to make sure that it gets out to the world in, a way that stays true to those values but, there are tensions there but, I think some of the tensions come about those the things that we care about most I talked earlier about the, importance of helping kids learn to think creative, light it's. Not easy to get a quantitative, measure of how you've, advanced, in your creative. Thinking it's, much easier, to get quantitative measure of how. Often do you use. Conditional. Statements so you can look at those projects, and see they're using conditionals, more and grade them based on that, we. Hope that that's not the way kids onto Bank evaluate, it because that'll sort of distort we think and what's gonna be most important, they'll be learning something that way it's not to say there's no value in that, but I think we want to make sure that, kids.

Continue Have this learning, not just the core computational. Concepts, but also design strategies. And creative ways of thinking so. We're, constantly working with educators. Trying to feel the best way of doing that it's, an ongoing process I think it continued a lot people are continuing to work on it I have. A question about the design. Of the scratch language I think, in a lot of other languages some, of those complicated, things that, you were talking about like playing audio might, be part of like an SDK, or a. Standard. Library or something whereas, in. Scratch maybe it's those, are more, like keywords, or blocks that are built into the language so I was just wondering what, you thought about that yeah, well, we wanted like would you start scratch we want to have a relatively, we. Want to make it easy. For everyone to have sort of this consistent. Collection. That it was going to be used and. We worried if there are too many different you know we've too, many different things you have to go and search for different things it was gonna make a more challenging for people to get started so we tried to figure out what were the core things we thought was most important, and there's a hundred or so core, blocks in scratch and, we. Try to think what are the things that would be most important, for the way kids want to express themselves before we started scratch, tamid, mentioned we worked we developed these network, of afterschool centers, called computer clubhouses, for, young people and low-income communities, and we saw the kids at these club houses they, wanted to create. Their own interactive stories and games and they loved manipulating, media but, there weren't good tools to let them create their interactive stories and games so we definitely had them in mind so, we want to make sure they were the right primitive, building blocks to, let you manipulate, sound. Music, images, you know photos make, it easy to bring in your own also to personalize, that to bring in your own voice to bring in your own song to bring your own images, so, we put a priority on that to, making our core set of things and, we found you could go pretty far with that as you, can see now we are having these extensions, that we're trying to see how we can keep that core set but, still make it possible to. Extend. In different ways there's. Still challenges, that we're can do well to think about, by. Having an online community, that's, one reason we want to keep it consistent so, if you saw us on the online community. It was clear that you, had all the tools to make it so, now if you see something the online communities using the. Micro bit be you and have a micro bit what does that mean as it confusing so we're trying to fair how to keep the community, done. In a way that you could filter out things, that aren't relevant, for you so, those are still things we're trying to work through. You. Mentioned, that you've. Worked a little bit with Lego, and scratch, and I was wondering, if. You. Know you. Guys were working on kind of bringing. Scratch. To. Mindstorms. And. Yo. If you've, thought about the differences, between Legos. Approach. To. Programming. Environment. Where it's all image, based and you have blocks that are just, pictures. And. Your. Approach where you, have blocks, that have words on them and I like. That yeah. And there's also some other differences, into the minds through the program labs that comes with Mindstorms. It. Also uses some different, just programming paradigms, as well it's not just the vision of the icons versus, words it. Sort of grew out of a dataflow tradition, rather than a control flow tradition, so there's some differences, in some of the ways that the. Languages are structured, we. Do we continue work closely with Lego. Legos. Work on the next generation of, Mindstorms we're working closely with them and trying, to know influence. From some of the ways that they'll be doing this in the future, obviously, we're deeply committed to the, scratch approach, I do see that we're, commit to the scratch approach, of the. Basic grammar but. For. Scratch jr. we do use icons, rather than words and we, think in some situations, partly based on age or partly on other factors we. Think someone's using icons can be fine if, people haven't seen on scratch jr. we use icons, and use it horizontal, you snap locks together horizontally. As, opposed to vertically, but, we're using icons it makes more sense doing, it that way so, we do see a place for both word, based text, based on the, blocks and icons, on the blocks, based.

On Different situations so we're working, together in fact on scratch 3.0, we're, building it all in the same, structures will be easier to switch back and forth between them, and we, think there's a role for both based on what age you're aiming for the type of applications. Okay. I just follow up do you have an idea of kind of what that, age. Switchover. Is between. Well. What we chose for like scratch jr. we'd say five to seven scratches, eight and up but, it's not that they're hard boundaries, we're, also still exploring, I think on different devices is we do more things with coding. On mobile. Phones we think there might be some bands if you're doing small programs, on phones there might be some advantages, for all ages, starting, with icon based blocks we're just doing small, programs. If you're doing longer programs, going. To text makes more sense so I think we're, still exploring, some of the ways to go between it's not just age based thank, you very much. Yeah. I'm happy to we, could just maybe call it in but I'm happy to stay around people just come up and talk informally maybe that makes sense. You.

2018-04-09 22:51

Other news