The BBC Technology news site just posted about Scratch, a new initiative from Mitch Resnick, who's moved on from Lego robotics to produce this animation programming environment.
(The site appears to be taking a hit right now - here's an older Scratch project site to be going on with.)
The tool uses an approach reminiscent of the Lego Mindstorms programming environment - users plug instruction blocks together create programme sequences.
What's really neat about scratch, though, is you can create lots of separate program fragments on a single canvas, and test them individually, then plug them together when you have created components you are happy with.
The programmes animate user selected characters (or photos) - as well as audio - that appear in a split pane in real time; live editing of a programme is also possible.
I can't in to the site to grab the download just now, but the tutorial movies look great - here's one on youTube - well worth taking a 5 minute coffee break over (watch it right through... demos first, howto second)... just get the way the 'instructions' are delivered :-)
Interactivity is also supported, the implication being you can create your own simple games.
The only issue I have with it is that it's very obviously targeted at kids... although it'd be great for adult education too.
I can see now why Bloomsbury issue the Harry Potter books in adult and child editions, which presumably differ only in their artwork.
But that masks the real problem, though - why shouldn't adults learn from playing with interactive kids' toys that just weren't around 40, 20, 10, 5, 2, 1 year ago?
I "play" with Lego robots in a schools a lot. The computing power of the RCX brick, and the flexibility of the the 'robot prototyping system' - - hardware and software - would have placed the technology at the cutting edge of robotics research 30 years ago.
So why's it kids' stuff now?
PS I also blogged a similar piece about Scratch on the open2.net Science & Technology blog.
Posted by ajh59 at May 15, 2007 10:13 AM