“I made it from scratch” is a phrase that conjures up images of homemade baked goods and cozy kitchens. The idea of “Coding a computer program from scratch,” on the other hand, entered the technology lexicon to describe a job usually cooked up on-the-fly. While the MIT Media Lab is not exactly a warm kitchen, they are giving Scratch away to help young people ages 8 and up develop 21st century learning skills with an easy-to-use programming tool.

Scratch makes it simple to create interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art–and share these creations on the web. As they create Scratch projects, young people learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also gaining a deeper understanding of the process of design.

Not all programmers think making programming easy is a good thing as a tongue-in-cheek comment on Slashdot may indicate, “Pfft. You whippersnappers have it easy! I had to wire my logic gates by hand. . . That was after I mined the copper to make the wires! Plus, I had to use an exercise bike to generate the electricity to power the thing!!!” Some educators are in favor of eliminating the drugery mystique from programming. David J. Malan, a lecturer in Harvard University’s continuing-education program, uses Scratch to teach adults how to program. He was recently quoted in a Chronicle of Higher Education article, “To this day, there’s a stigma and a fear factor” around computer science. Eliminating that stigma or making computer science or programming more accessible to a broader audience can only help potentially recruit additional students to the science.”

Scratch is developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab, in collaboration with the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, with financial support from the National Science Foundation, Intel Foundation, and MIT Media Lab research consortia.