Intro to Scratch

Scratch is a programming language for young people to create their own interactive stories, games, music, and art.

Scratch was created by the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab.

You can find more information and download Scratch for free at http://scratch.mit.edu

Music: "You and Your Bright Ideas" by DoKashiteru

Imagine creating your own video games, animated stories, or interactive art.

Scratch is a programming language that makes it easy

for people to make all kinds of creative projects.

With Scratch, you can make things walk, talk, sing, dance,

bounce, fly, win, lose, or draw.

Scratch is used by all different kinds of people all

over the world to make all different kinds of projects.

"I love drawing stuff. I especially liked drawing this

picture because it was really fun."

"In this project, I used the sprite to draw a pattern."

"I started making these stories up. I don't know

where they come from, I guess my imagination."

"My first project was a remix of one of the sample

projects that come with Scratch. I just love the

creativity of Scratch. There are endless possibilities.

It's not like you can just make this project, or this project

and that's all you can make."

"But Scratch isn't just a tool. It's also a community."

"You get to see other people's projects and learn from

them; and get ideas from them."

"I like to compose my own music in Scratch and draw my own characters."

"I love math, and I like making other people interested

in it too."

Getting started is easy. You can download Scratch for

free and just start exploring. You snap together Scratch

blocks, just like you would snap together Lego bricks.

Let's make the cat dance back-and-forth to a beat.

[drum beat] If I want to make the cat dance back-and-

forth more than one time, I can wrap a repeat block around

it. [drum beats several times] Now let's make it

interactive. I'll place this block on top, and now

when I click on the cat sprite, check out what happens.

[drum beats several times] You can even try different

things out while the project is still running and experiment

with different scripts. "It's a program that lets you

explore your imagination. You can do whatever you want

in it. You can design anything." "Using Scratch, I definitely

learned programming. But I also learned how to collaborate

with other people." "This project has voices in it.

I had my friends record their voices, and then I used it

in my project." "It's like you can do whatever you want,

really. You can be as creative as you want to be."

I can't wait to see what you create with Scratch.

What will you imagine? What will you program?

And what will you share?