Scratch

Introduction:

The Scratch is a multimedia authoring tool that can be used by students, scholars, teachers, and parents for a range of educational and entertainment constructiveness purposes from math and science projects, including simulations and visualizations of experiments, recording lectures with animated presentations, to social sciences animated stories, and interactive and music. Simple games can be made with it, as well. On the Scratch website we can view existing projects. The website also allows us to modify and test the projects without having to online register or save them.

Scratch allows its users to use event driven programming with multiple active objects called "sprites". Sprites can be drawn either as vector or bitmap graphics from scratch in a simple editor that is part of the Scratch, or can be imported from external sources, including webcam.

History:

The first version of Scratch was developed in 2003 by the Lifelong Kindergarten group, led by Mitchel Ransack at MIT.The old (original) scratch.mit.edu website with its launch in 2006

The first official website was originally launched in 2006. Scratch 1.0 was then later available to the public for download in January 8 2007. The Scratch website after the release of public project sharing

In March 2007, project sharing was possible and the whole Scratch website was completely redesigned. The public were able to create, share and remix their own projects as well as others. Scratch continued to update their site until late 2012 when they released Scratch 2.0 which offered many updates to the programming system and website design.

User interface:

     Screenshot of Scratch 2's Development Environment at Startup Company

From left to right, in the upper part of the left column there is a "stage area" featuring the results (either in small or normal size, full-screen also available) and all sprites thumbnails listed below the stage.

In the middle column in its upper part there are ten tabs: scripts, costumes, sounds, looks, motions, operators, sensing, events, data and more blocks. Under "Scripts tab", eight groups of blocks, each of its own color and shape, appear. Individual block (i.e. command) is testable under different conditions and parameters via double-click, or it can be dragged onto the scripts area to be part of the script governing a selected sprite.

In blue color are blocks governing movement, whereas those governing a selected sprite's looks, sound, pen, control, sensing, operators (in versions 1.3.1 and lower, the operators group was named "numbers" group), variables (that can be either local or global), and "more blocks", are in violet, pink, dark green, orange, brown, goldenrod, light blue, light green, and ultramarine, respectively. When the group is clicked, all the blocks belonging to the group appear for selection and dragging.

In the right column there is a script area featuring scripts, consisting of dragged blocks, that are linked to a selected sprite. Additionally, far right there is an expandable help area.

In pre-2 version, the blocks palette was on the left, in the middle were the selected sprite area and scripts area associated with a selected sprite, and the stage area with sprites thumbnails listed below it were in the right column.

Community of users:

Scratch is used in many different settings: schools, museums, community centers, and homes. For example, younger children can create projects with their parents or older siblings, and college students use Scratch in some introductory computer science classes (including Harvard's introductory computer class)." 

With the local files downloaded with Scratch its interface language can be changed to a language of choice since Scratch is used in different parts of the world. The Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth offers an online course on Scratch programming for students in grade 6 and up through the city Online program.

Empirical studies were made of various features those that interfered with intuitive learning were discarded, while those that encouraged beginners and made it easy for them to explore and learn were kept. Some of the results are surprising, making Scratch quite different from other teaching languages (such as BASIC, Logo, or Alice).

Online community:

The Scratch online community's slogan "Imagine, Program, Share" indicates that sharing and the social aspects of creativity are important parts of the philosophy behind Scratch. A few influential members of the Scratch online community made great personal strides in innovative methods with scratch programming.

Scratch projects are not seen as black boxes but as objects for remixing to make new projects. Projects can be uploaded directly from the development environment to the Scratch website and any member of the community can download their full source code to study or to remix into new projects. Members can also create project galleries, comment, tag, favorite and "love" others' projects and share ideas. Projects range from games to animations to catboats. 

All projects on the website are shared under a Creative Commons attribution and share-alike license and can be played in a web browser (using the Flash Player, which are not available for i Phones/i Pods). The website receives close to 10 million page views per month and as of January 2, 2013 it had 1,349,093 registered members (however, only 402,697 users have shared projects), and over 4,200,000 projects (every minute more than one project gets uploaded). The website frequently establishes "Scratch Design Studio" challenges to encourage creation and sharing by providing users with a basic design concept. There are custom home pages for Mexico and Israel that display local content in some sections of the home page. There are also local independent Scratch websites in countries such as Portugal and the United Arab Emirates. In 2008, the Scratch online community platform (named "Scratch") received an honorary mention in the Ares Electronics Prix. There is also an online community for educators, called Scratched. Scratch is also a fun literary structure, with online role-plays that range in many different genres.