This article was taken from the November 2012 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by <span class="s1">subscribing online. "Instead of children bored out of their minds being taught how to use Word and Excel by bored teachers, we could have 11-year-olds able to write simple 2D computer animations using an MIT tool called Scratch," said UK education secretary Michael Gove earlier this year. A programming language for kids released in 2007 (version 2.0 comes out this autumn), Scratch allows children to create interactive stories, games, animations and simulations and share their creations online. "We take the ideas of the Media Lab and see how we can bring them into the lives of children," says Mitchel Resnick, head of the Lifelong Kindergarten group that made Scratch.
At the time of writing, more than 2.6 million creations are being shared online. "Kids like their virtual construction kits where, for instance, they'll do their own LEGO building kits on screen or reconstructions of classic videogames," says Resnick, 56 (pictured in the gallery with a selection of children's Scratch creations). "There's a variety of places that are trying to add Scratch to the curriculum."
Resnick's life hasn't always been this playful: he graduated in physics and covered Silicon Valley for Businessweek in the early 80s. A partnership with Seymour Papert, one of the lab's founding fathers, changed his career. "Seymour was one of the first to see that computers could help kids express themselves and design and create things," says Resnick. "That was an inspiration."
In 1985, when Resnick and Papert made a prototype connecting LEGO to a computer, the toy giant got in touch. Later, Resnick managed to squeeze the computation inside the LEGO brick, which let children program and build interactive robots -- and became the basis for LEGO's Mindstorms kit, released in 1998. "I proudly hold the title of LEGO professor," says Resnick. "Its bricks are designed to help people learn through design and creation. We try to extend that spirit to the digital world."
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
