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A new project released by the MIT Media Lab, Scratch aims to make the construction of interactive media easier for children. As with all such tools now, Scratch uses a graphic interface and the interactive elements are created using code objects as building blocks. The code objects are split into different categories such as Motion, Looks, Sound and Control, these are also colour coded. The designers appear to have used some modern ideas used in professional software and taken it to a new level. Like many programing tools the lines of code are colour tagged, whilst indentation is used to show the structure of the code. By taking these two ideas and enhancing them, MIT have created a simple graphic building block system for creating code for the interactives. At a different level Scratch could be used as a simple introductory tool to programming languages, showing the structure and general elements of a language. The interface is easy to navigate and a quick glance at the starters manual is enough to get most people going. The basic interface begs to be played with and is quite intuitive. Those that have used Director will recognise the language used to describe the interface elements, such as Stage, Sprites etc. If you have kids, then download it today. They could end up at the LCEA! Windows and Mac versions of Scratch can be downloaded from the MIT Scratch web site. There is also a tutorial video at Youtube. |
