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It was a Saturday afternoon in May,

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and I suddenly realized

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that the next day was Mother's Day,

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and I hadn't gotten anything for my mom,

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so I started thinking about

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what should I get my mom for Mother's Day?

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I thought, why don't I make her

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an interactive Mother's Day card

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using the Scratch software that I'd been developing

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with my research group at the MIT Media Lab?

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We developed it so that people could easily create

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their own interactive stories and games and animations,

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and then share their creations with one another.

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So I thought, this would be an opportunity to use Scratch

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to make an interactive card for my mom.

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Before making my own Mother's Day card,

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I thought I would take a look

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at the Scratch website.

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So over the last several years, kids around the world

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ages 8 and up, have shared their projects,

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and I thought, I wonder if, of those three million projects,

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whether anyone else has thought to put up Mother's Day cards.

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So in the search box I typed in

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"Mother's Day,"

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and I was surprised and delighted to see a list

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of dozens and dozens of Mother's Day cards

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that showed up on the Scratch website,

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many of them just in the past 24 hours

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by procrastinators just like myself.

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So I started taking a look at them. (Music)

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I saw one of them that featured a kitten

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and her mom and wishing her mom a happy Mother's Day.

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And the creator very considerately

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offered a replay for her mom.

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Another one was an interactive project where,

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when you moved the mouse over the letters of "Happy Mom Day,"

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it reveals a special happy Mother's Day slogan.

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(Music) In this one, the creator told a narrative

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about how she had Googled to find out

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when Mother's Day was happening.

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(Typing) And then once she found out when Mother's Day was happening,

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she delivered a special Mother's Day greeting

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of how much she loved her mom.

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So I really enjoyed looking at these projects

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and interacting with these projects.

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In fact, I liked it so much that, instead of making my own project,

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I sent my mom links to about a dozen of these projects. (Laughter)

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And actually, she reacted exactly the way that I hoped that she would.

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She wrote back to me and she said,

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"I'm so proud to have a son that created the software

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that allowed these kids to make Mother's Day cards for their mothers."

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So my mom was happy, and that made me happy,

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but actually I was even happier for another reason.

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I was happy because these kids were using Scratch

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just in the way that we had hoped that they would.

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As they created their interactive Mother's Day cards,

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you could see that they were really

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becoming fluent with new technologies.

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What do I mean by fluent?

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I mean that they were able to start expressing themselves

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and to start expressing their ideas.

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When you become fluent with language,

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it means you can write an entry in your journal

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or tell a joke to someone or write a letter to a friend.

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And it's similar with new technologies.

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By writing, be creating these interactive Mother's Day cards,

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these kids were showing that they were really fluent

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with new technologies.

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Now maybe you won't be so surprised by this,

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because a lot of times people feel that

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young people today can do all sorts of things with technology.

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I mean, all of us have heard young people referred to as "digital natives."

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But actually I'm sort of skeptical about this term.

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I'm not so sure we should be thinking of young people as digital natives.

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When you really look at it, how is it that young people

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spend most of their time using new technologies?

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You often see them in situations like this,

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or like this,

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and there's no doubt that young people

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are very comfortable and familiar browsing

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and chatting and texting and gaming.

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But that doesn't really make you fluent.

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So young people today have lots of experience

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and lots of familiarity with interacting with new technologies,

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but a lot less so of creating with new technologies

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and expressing themselves with new technologies.

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It's almost as if they can read

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but not write with new technologies.

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And I'm really interested in seeing, how can we help young people become fluent

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so they can write with new technologies?

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And that really means that they need to be able to

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write their own computer programs, or code.

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So, increasingly, people are starting to recognize

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the importance of learning to code.

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You know, in recent years, there have been

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hundreds of new organizations and websites

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that are helping young people learn to code.

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You look online, you'll see places like Codecademy

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and events like CoderDojo

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and sites like Girls Who Code,

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or Black Girls Code.

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It seems that everybody is getting into the act.

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You know, just at the beginning of this year,

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at the turn of the new year,

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New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg

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made a New Year's resolution that he was going to learn

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to code in 2012.

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A few months later, the country of Estonia decided that

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all of its first graders should learn to code.

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And that triggered a debate in the U.K.

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about whether all the children there should learn to code.

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Now, for some of you, when you hear about this,

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it might seem sort of strange about everybody learning to code.

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When many people think of coding, they think of it

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as something that only a very narrow sub-community

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of people are going to be doing,

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and they think of coding looking like this.

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And in fact, if this is what coding is like,

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it will only be a narrow sub-community of people

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with special mathematical skills and technological background

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that can code.

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But coding doesn't have to be like this.

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Let me show you about what it's like to code in Scratch.

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So in Scratch, to code, you just snap blocks together.

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In this case, you take a move block,

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snap it into a stack,

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and the stacks of blocks control the behaviors

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of the different characters in your game or your story,

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in this case controlling the big fish.

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After you've created your program, you can click on "share,"

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and then share your project with other people,

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so that they can use the project

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and start working on the project as well.

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So, of course, making a fish game isn't the only thing

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you can do with Scratch.

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Of the millions of projects on the Scratch website,

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there's everything from animated stories

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to school science projects

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to anime soap operas

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to virtual construction kits

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to recreations of classic video games

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to political opinion polls

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to trigonometry tutorials

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to interactive artwork, and, yes,

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interactive Mother's Day cards.

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So I think there's so many different ways

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that people can express themselves using this,

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to be able to take their ideas and share their ideas with the world.

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And it doesn't just stay on the screen.

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You can also code to interact with the physical world around you.

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Here's an example from Hong Kong,

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where some kids made a game

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and then built their own physical interface device

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and had a light sensor, so the light sensor

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detects the hole in the board,

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so as they move the physical saw,

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the light sensor detects the hole

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and controls the virtual saw on the screen

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and saws down the tree.

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We're going to continue to look at new ways

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of bringing together the physical world and the virtual world

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and connecting to the world around us.

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This is an example from a new version of Scratch

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that we'll be releasing in the next few months,

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and we're looking again to be able

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to push you in new directions.

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Here's an example.

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It uses the webcam.

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And as I move my hand, I can pop the balloons

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or I can move the bug.

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So it's a little bit like Microsoft Kinect,

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where you interact with gestures in the world.

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But instead of just playing someone else's game,

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you get to create the games,

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and if you see someone else's game,

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you can just say "see inside,"

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and you can look at the stacks of blocks that control it.

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So there's a new block that says how much video motion there is,

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and then, if there's so much video motion,

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it will then tell the balloon to pop.

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The same way that this uses the camera

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to get information into Scratch,

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you can also use the microphone.

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Here's an example of a project using the microphone.

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So I'm going to let all of you control this game

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using your voices.

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(Crickets chirping) (Shouts) (Chomping)

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(Laughter)

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(Applause)

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As kids are creating projects like this,

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they're learning to code,

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but even more importantly, they're coding to learn.

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Because as they learn to code,

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it enables them to learn many other things,

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opens up many new opportunities for learning.

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Again, it's useful to make an analogy to reading and writing.

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When you learn to read and write, it opens up

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opportunities for you to learn so many other things.

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When you learn to read, you can then read to learn.

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And it's the same thing with coding.

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If you learn to code, you can code to learn.

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Now some of the things you can learn are sort of obvious.

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You learn more about how computers work.

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But that's just where it starts.

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When you learn to code, it opens up for you to learn

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many other things.

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Let me show you an example.

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Here's another project,

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and I saw this when I was visiting

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one of the computer clubhouses.

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These are after-school learning centers that we helped start

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that help young people from low-income communities

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learn to express themselves creatively with new technologies.

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And when I went to one of the clubhouses a couple years ago,

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I saw a 13-year-old boy who was using our Scratch software

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to create a game somewhat like this one,

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and he was very happy with his game and proud of his game,

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but also he wanted to do more.

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He wanted to keep score.

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So this was a game where the big fish eats the little fish,

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but he wanted to keep score, so that each time

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the big fish eats the little fish,

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the score would go up and it would keep track,

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and he didn't know how to do that.

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So I showed him.

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In Scratch, you can create something called a variable.

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I'll call it score.

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And that creates some new blocks for you,

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and also creates a little scoreboard that keeps track of the score,

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so each time I click on "change score," it increments the score.

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So I showed this to the clubhouse member --

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let's call him Victor -- and Victor,

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when he saw that this block would let him increment the score,

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he knew exactly what to do.

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He took the block

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and he put it into the program

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exactly where the big fish eats the little fish.

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So then, each time the big fish eats the little fish,

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he will increment the score, and the score will go up by one.

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And it's in fact working.

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And he saw this, and he was so excited,

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he reached his hand out to me,

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and he said, "Thank you, thank you, thank you."

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And what went through my mind was,

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how often is it that teachers are thanked by their students

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for teaching them variables? (Laughter)

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It doesn't happen in most classrooms,

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but that's because in most classrooms, when kids learn about variables,

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they don't know why they're learning it.

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It's nothing that, really, they can make use of.

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When you learn ideas like this in Scratch,

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you can learn it in a way that's really meaningful and motivating for you,

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that you can understand the reason for learning variables,

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and we see that kids learn it more deeply

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and learn it better.

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Victor had, I'm sure, been taught about variables in schools,

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but he really didn't -- he wasn't paying attention.

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Now he had a reason for learning variables.

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So when you learn through coding, and coding to learn,

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you're learning it in a meaningful context, and that's the best way of learning things.

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So as kids like Victor are creating projects like this,

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they're learning important concepts like variables,

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but that's just the start.

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As Victor worked on this project and created the scripts,

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he was also learning about the process of design,

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how to start with the glimmer of an idea

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and turn it into a fully-fledged, functioning project

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like you see here.

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So he was learning many different core principles of design,

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about how to experiment with new ideas,

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how to take complex ideas and break them down into simpler parts,

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how to collaborate with other people on your projects,

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about how to find and fix bugs when things go wrong,

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how to keep persistent and to persevere

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in the face of frustrations when things aren't working well.

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Now those are important skills

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that aren't just relevant for coding.

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They're relevant for all sorts of different activities.

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Now, who knows if Victor is going to grow up and become

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a programmer or a professional computer scientist?

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It's probably not so likely,

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but regardless of what he does,

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he'll be able to make use of these design skills that he learned.

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Regardless of whether he grows up to be a marketing manager

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or a mechanic or a community organizer,

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that these ideas are useful for everybody.

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Again, it's useful to think about this analogy with language.

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When you become fluent with reading and writing,

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it's not something that you're doing

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just to become a professional writer.

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Very few people become professional writers.

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But it's useful for everybody to learn how to read and write.

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Again, the same thing with coding.

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Most people won't grow up to become professional

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computer scientists or programmers,

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but those skills of thinking creatively,

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reasoning systematically, working collaboratively --

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skills you develop when you code in Scratch --

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are things that people can use no matter what they're doing in their work lives.

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And it's not just about your work life.

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Coding can also enable you to

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express your ideas and feelings in your personal life.

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Let me end with just one more example.

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So this is an example that came from

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after I had sent the Mother's Day cards to my mom,

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she decided that she wanted to learn Scratch.

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So she made this project for my birthday

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and sent me a happy birthday Scratch card.

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Now this project is not going to win any prizes for design,

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and you can rest assured that my 83-year-old mom

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is not training to become a professional programmer or computer scientist.

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But working on this project enabled her

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to make a connection to someone that she cares about

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and enabled her to keep on learning new things

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and continuing to practice her creativity

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and developing new ways of expressing herself.

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So as we take a look and we see that

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Michael Bloomberg is learning to code,

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all of the children of Estonia learn to code,

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even my mom has learned to code,

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don't you think it's about time that you might be

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thinking about learning to code?

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If you're interested in giving it a try,

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I'd encourage you to go to the Scratch website.

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It's scratch.mit.edu,

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and give a try at coding.

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Thanks very much. (Applause)