Flickr: AngryJulieMonday

By Heather Chaplin

Since MIT’s Lifelong Kindergarten group released Scratch in 2007, kids ages 8 to 13 have built more than 2.2 million animations, games, music, videos and stories using the kid-friendly programming language.

Scratch allows kids to snap together graphical blocks of instructions, like Lego bricks, to control sprites—the movable objects that perform actions. Sprites can dance, sing, run and talk.

Now, with a grant from the National Science Foundation, Lifelong Kindergarten is collaborating with Tufts University’s DevTech Research Group to make Scratch Jr, a new version aimed at kids in preschool to second grade. The expected launch date is summer 2012.

The new project raises questions about childhood development and digital learning, and just how early kids should be introduced to computers.

Mitch Resnick, director of the Lifelong Kindergarten group, spearheaded the creation of Scratch. Having worked with a network of afterschool programs using digital media, Resnick was struck by the lack of software that enabled kids to go beyond playing with other people’s media. There was nothing that encouraged them to make their own interactive stories and games.

“What’s most important to me is that young children start to develop a relationship with the computer where they feel they’re in control,” Resnick said. “We don’t want kids to see the computer as something where they just browse and click. We want them to see digital technologies as something they can use to express themselves.”

There’s been a lot of buzz in the last few years about what it means to be literate in the 21st century. To Resnick, teaching kids to program was like teaching children of another generation how to write.

“At one point, there was a growing realization that people needed to learn how to write as well as read,” Resnick said. “They needed to be able to express themselves as well as understand how other people expressed themselves. Now it’s the same with new media. It’s not enough to be able to interact with new technologies; you have to be able to create with new technologies.”

The problem, though, is that programming languages like Java and C++ are difficult to learn. Resnick and his team imagined a language that would be more “tinkerable,“ as he calls it—more accessible. They also wanted the language to encourage kids to create work that was “personally meaningful,” as opposed to simply manipulating numbers. Lastly, they wanted the program to have a social component so kids could share their work and learn from one another.

While Resnick was building Scratch, Marina Bers, a graduate student at MIT’s Media Lab, was focusing on younger children, building, among other things, a programming language for robotics aimed at preschool-aged children. Bers would leave MIT for a position at Tufts University, but she and Resnick stayed in touch. In 2010, they decided to partner to develop the Scratch version for a younger audience. Scratch Jr officially kicked off this last summer.

According to Bers, the challenge is creating an interface that very young children can understand. Some of the problems are straightforward, like the fact that Scratch relies on text, and the youngest children cannot yet read.

“I’ve noticed materials online for games aimed at kids pre-K to third grade where there’s this assumption that children are fluent with reading when they’re not,” said Lisa Guernsey, director of the Early Education Initiative at the New America Foundation. “This then becomes an exercise in frustration.”

Bers hopes to solve this problem by replacing the text of Scratch with voice-over instructions.

In focus groups with teachers and children, the Scratch Jr research team has also noticed that younger children struggle with the number of blocks needed to create a program. “The relationship between cause and effect needs to be clearer for this age group,” Bers said. The idea is to reorganize the program so kids can focus on only one thing at a time.

Younger children also have trouble distinguishing between the colors in Scratch, (Scratch Jr will be redone in bright, primary colors), and they struggle with how Scratch moves from top to bottom (Scratch Jr will move from side to side.)

The group has also been studying tutorials in videogames, which teach kids how to play without realizing they’re being taught. “We want to add something like that to Scratch Jr,” Bers said.

For children ages 3 to 8, social interaction is perhaps the most important part of the learning process. That interaction can be with a teacher, a parent, an older sibling or a neighbor, said Guernsey of The New America Foundation, but young children must be able to study the facial expressions and other reactions of this “social partner.”

“The child needs to feel that what they’re learning is important to this other person,” Guernsey said. “Then it will go into the part of the child’s brain stamped ‘important.’”

When learning moves online, this becomes an issue.

“It can be the most wonderful content in the world,” Guernsey said. “But if it’s just slid into their lives without a social partner, then a lot of learning will be lost.”

The challenge isn’t lost on Bers. “We want to promote social interaction,” she said. “The question is, how do we imbed teacher interaction into Scratch Jr?”

Bers thinks of a playground. A good playground will have swing sets and slides for the kids, as well as benches and tables and chairs for the parents. The designers of Scratch Jr are figuring out how to embed the digital equivalent of those tables and chairs.

There are many who blanch at the idea of putting such young children in front of a computer screen. Concern over “screen time” is nothing knew—it began with television. But, according to Ellen Wartella, a professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Northwestern University, these issues are far more nuanced than most people allow. First of all, she said, there simply isn’t good long-term research to show that being in front of a screen affects children negatively now, or in the future.

“There is no evidence of harm, although there are a lot of complaints,” she said.

Wartella isn’t saying screen time is good for children at a young age. Rather, she’s saying there isn’t good evidence yet to say it’s bad. There are no high-quality long-term studies that show that too much screen time as a 3-year-old will have direct consequences when he or she is 4 or 14. And in past research on TV screen time, it’s hard to untangle the effects of other influences, like parents and income.

One mistake people make, Wartella said, is focusing on the fact of the screen itself rather than the content of what the screen is showing. “Is it bad for kids to Skype with Grandma? I don’t think anyone would say that.”

Both Wartell and Guernsey refer to “the three Cs,” when considering these issues: content, context and the child. The question isn’t whether it is inherently good or bad when a preschooler is given a videogame. Rather, the questions should be contextual: Is the child playing with a social partner or on her own? What is the educational value of the game? And what are the needs of the particular child?

“When people worry about screen time, it’s the substitution effect they’re really worried about,” Guernsey said. “What happens when a kid is so enraptured by screen activity that they won’t go outside to play in other ways? But screen time being harmful by itself, there’s no evidence of that.”

For Bers and Resnick, it comes back to preparing children to be literate—in all the ways literacy is perceived today. For real empowerment in a world flooded with digital media, people need to understand not only how to interact with it, but how to make media themselves. Teaching children as young as 5 how to program not only teaches important executive functioning skills, which is crucial for that age group, but also helps demystify the computer, Bers said.

“Computers for most people are black boxes,” she said. “I believe kids should understand objects are ‘smart’ not because they’re just smart, but because someone programmed them to be smart.

“Also,” she said, echoing Resnick, “it’s about expression. In our times, we need kids to be able to express ideas in different ways, and learning to work in Scratch, in a computational medium, will give them another way of expressing themselves.”

The post originally appeared on Spotlight for Digital Media & Learning.

Flickr:wwworks

Could it be that the best way to learn happens in kindergarten? It’s an intriguing proposition, one that’s being explored at M.I.T. by folks like Mitch Resnick, the creator of the famous computer programming site for beginners called Scratch.

Resnick brought up the idea last week at the New York Times’ School for Tomorrow summit, and proclaimed that “schools should be on the edge of chaos,” a comment that lit up the Twitterverse.

Resnick is one of three recipients, including Robert Beichner, a physics professor at North Carolina State University, and Julie Young, president of Florida Virtual School, of the McGraw Prize in
Education. The three of them worked on a paper that exemplifies how technology should work seamlessly with learning.

Here’s Resnick’s excerpt from the paper, which in turn excerpts parts of A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change by Doug Thomas and John Seely Brown.

By Mitch Resnick:

At the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology our goal is to design technologies that empower people to explore, experiment, and express themselves in new ways. My Lifelong Kindergarten group develops tools that engage people in creative learning experiences, emphasizing the type of interest-driven, collaborative activities that traditionally exist in kindergarten.

We are inspired by the way kindergarten students learn through a spiraling process in which they imagine what they want to do, create a project based on their ideas, play with their creations, share their ideas and creations with others, and reflect on their experiences – all of which leads them to imagine new ideas and new projects. This iterative learning process is ideal preparation for today’s fast-changing society in which people must continually come up with innovative solutions to unexpected situations in their lives.

We work to develop new technologies that, in the spirit of the blocks and finger paint of kindergarten, expand the range of what people can design, create, and learn – thus sowing the seeds for a more creative society. Our goal is to help children learn to think creatively, reason systematically, work collaboratively, and learn continuously – essential skills for success in the 21st century. We are developing a new generation of technologies that not only enable children to connect with new concepts and ideas but also enable them to connect with other people, providing new pathways for sharing, collaborating, and empathizing with one another.

Examples from two of my projects – Scratch and the Computer Clubhouse – illustrate this point.
Scratch is a graphical programming environment that makes it easy for children ages eight and up to create their own interactive stories, games, animations, and simulations – and then share their creations with one another online. Roughly one million children have joined the Scratch online community, where they share more than 2,000 new Scratch projects each day.

The way students use this online community provides a compelling example of how valuable human connections can be fostered by new digital tools. Participants in the Scratch community serve alternately as peers and teachers, solving problems and perfecting programs together. The following excerpt from A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change, a recent book by Doug Thomas and John Seely Brown, describes the experiences of nine-year-old Sam, who uses Scratch to create his own animations and games:

Scratch has an additional element that takes the experience to a different level: a collective, a community of similarly minded people who helped Sam learn and meet the very particular set of needs that he had. When Sam posted his game online to that community, it became accessible to thousands of other kids who were also working with Scratch, and that’s when some very interesting things started to happen. The other players were able not only to play Sam’s game, but also, with the click of a button, to download it into the Scratch interface, see the code, and modify it if they wished.

Perhaps the most important aspect of all, however, was the users’ ability to comment on projects they liked by clicking a “Love it?” button. What Sam found when he joined the online community was that he was no longer simply creating animations or games; he was part of a larger conversation. He was excited about receiving his first comment, of course. But when we asked Sam what it meant to be a good member of the Scratch community, we were surprised by his answer. It had nothing to do with building games or posting animations. Instead, Sam told us that the single most important thing was to “not be mean” in your comments and to make sure that you commented on something good when you came across it, as well. The game does not just teach programming; it cultivated citizenship…

Sam made perhaps the most revealing comment, one that tells us the most about the new culture of learning, when we asked him what he looks for in other people’s programs. He told us, “something really cool that you could never know yourself.” While playing Scratch, Sam has learned a lot about programming and a lot about participating in online communities. But what he has learned most of all is how to learn from others.

The following example illustrates how a 13-year-old girl, identified as “BalaBethany,” learned to program through interactions with peers online:

BalaBethany enjoys drawing anime characters. So when she started using Scratch, it was natural for her to program animated stories featuring these characters. She began sharing her projects on the Scratch Web site, and other members of the community responded positively, posting glowing comments under her projects (such as “Awesome!” and “OMG I LUV IT!!!!!!”), along with questions about how she achieved certain visual effects (such as “How do you make a sprite look see-through?”). Encouraged, BalaBethany then created and shared new Scratch projects on a regular basis, like episodes in a TV series.

She periodically added new characters to her series and at one point asked why not involve the whole Scratch community in the process? She created and uploaded a new Scratch project that announced a “contest,” asking other community members to design a sister for one of her characters. The project listed a set of requirements for the new character, including “Must have red or blue hair, please choose” and “Has to have either cat or ram horns, or a combo of both.”
The project received more than 100 comments. One was from a community member who wanted to enter the contest but said she didn’t know how to draw anime characters. So BalaBethany produced another Scratch project, a step-by step tutorial, demonstrating a 13-step process for drawing and coloring anime characters.

Over the course of a year, BalaBethany programmed and shared more than 200 Scratch projects, covering a range of project types (stories, contests, tutorials, and more). Her programming and artistic skills progressed, and her projects clearly resonated with the Scratch community, receiving more than 12,000 comments.

Our group at MIT also founded the Computer Clubhouse project, an international network of 100 after-school centers where low-income youth ages 10-18 learn to express themselves creatively with new technologies. With support from adult mentors, participants create interactive stories, music videos, and robotic constructions. The following excerpt underscores how technology can help children forge their identities and establish themselves as part of a community:

Consider Mike Lee, who spent time at the original Computer Clubhouse in Boston. Mike first came to the Clubhouse after he had dropped out of high school. His true passion was drawing. He filled up notebook after notebook with sketches of cartoon characters. At the Clubhouse, Mike developed a new method for his artwork. First, he would draw black-and-white sketches by hand. Then, he would scan the sketches into the computer and use the computer to color them in. His work often involved comic-book images of himself and his friends.

Over time, Mike learned to use more advanced computer techniques in his artwork. Everyone in the Clubhouse was impressed with Mike’s creations, and other youth began to come to him for advice. Some members explicitly mimicked Mike’s artistic style. Before long, a collection of “Mike Lee style” artwork filled the bulletin boards of the Clubhouse. “It’s kind of flattering,” said Mike.

For the first time in Mike’s life, other people were looking up to him. He began to feel a new sense of responsibility. He decided to stop using guns in his artwork, feeling that it was a bad influence on the younger Clubhouse members. “My own personal artwork is more hard core, about street violence. I had a close friend who was shot and died,” Mike explained. “But I don’t want to bring that here. I have an extra responsibility. Kids don’t understand about guns; they think it’s cool. They see a fight, it’s natural they want to go see it. They don’t understand. They’re just kids.”

Mike began working with others at the Clubhouse on collaborative projects. Together, they created an Online Art Gallery on the Web. Once a week, they met with a local artist who agreed to be a mentor for the project. After a year, their online art show was accepted as an exhibition at Siggraph, the world’s premiere computer-graphics conference.

As Mike worked with others at the Clubhouse, he began to experiment with new artistic techniques. He added more computer effects, and he began working on digital collages combining photographs and graphics, while still maintaining his distinctive style. Over time, Mike explored how he might use his artwork as a form of social commentary and political expression.

As he worked at the Clubhouse, Mike Lee clearly learned a lot about computers and about graphic design. But he also began to develop his own ideas about teaching and learning. “At the Clubhouse, I was free to do what I wanted, learn what I wanted,” said Mike. “Whatever I did was just for me. If I had taken computer courses [in school], there would have been all those assignments. Here I could be totally creative.” Mike remembers – and appreciates – how the Clubhouse staff members treated him when he first started at the Clubhouse. They asked him to design the sign for the entrance to the Clubhouse, and looked to him as a resource. They never thought of him as a “high-school dropout” but as an artist.

After several years of volunteer work at the Clubhouse, Mike earned his high- school equivalency diploma, then landed a job as a graphic designer at a high- tech company near Boston, designing graphics for the company’s web pages, stationery, catalogs, and brochures.

Mike’s experiences at the Computer Clubhouse illustrate the power of human interaction and digital learning to support and encourage a learner who felt alienated by his traditional school experience. With access to the technology and social support at the Computer Clubhouse, Mike learned how to develop his artistic skills, to share his expertise with others, and to become an active and productive member of his community.