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>> MITCH RESNICK: Hi, I'm Mitch Resnick.

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I'm a Professor of Learning
Research here at the MIT Media Lab,

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and I also direct the MIT Scratch Team.

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JOHN MALONEY: I'm John
Maloney, and I was

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a researcher for about 11 years
working on the Scratch Project

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as the lead developer.

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MITCH RESNICK: We call
our research group

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the Lifelong Kindergarten group because
we're inspired by the way children

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learn in kindergarten.

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The classic kindergarten, children
are playfully designing and creating

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things in collaboration with
one another-- buildings towers

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with wooden blocks, making pictures
with finger paints and crayons.

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As we developed Scratch, we wanted
to capture that kindergarten spirit

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for learners of all ages.

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JOHN MALONEY: One of the
big motivations for Scratch

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was this project that
Mitchell and Natalie

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had started called the
Computer Clubhouse.

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And they saw a lot of kids doing
stuff with media tools like Photoshop

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and various sound production tools,
but they weren't doing any programming.

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The kids weren't doing any programming,
and we looked around and said, well,

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why aren't they doing it?

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The answer seemed to
be that there wasn't

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a tool that was appropriate
for that setting.

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>> MITCH RESNICK: As we
were developing Scratch,

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I was inspired by some of the ideas
of my mentor, Seymour Papert, who

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developed the Logo programming language.

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Seymour always used to say that it
was important for a new technology

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to have a low floor-- meaning it's easy
to get started with-- a high ceiling--

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meaning you could do more and
more complex things with it.

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We also wanted to have
what we call "wide walls,"

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meaning there are many
different pathways,

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that you can do many different
things with the software.

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>> It's not enough just to be able to get
started easily and do complex things

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if everyone's doing the same thing.

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We want to have many different pathways
because we know different people have

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different interests,
and we wanted everyone

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to be able to work on projects that
grew out of their own interests.

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>> JOHN MALONEY: I'd like
to say that we probably--

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there's-- we considered about 10 times
more commands and features than have

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ever ended up in Scratch.

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We would have endless
debates about exactly what

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wording to put on blocks and
things like whether the default

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direction of the sprites
should be up or to the right.

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So we thought about all of these things,
especially the very early experiences

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that people would have
with Scratch and trying

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to make it so that things could be
discovered just by experimentation.

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>> MITCH RESNICK: When we were
first designing Scratch,

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our target audience was ages 8 to 16.

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JOHN MALONEY: On the
low end of the spectrum,

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we found that much younger kids were
using Scratch than we ever anticipated.

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I still remember one-- the first
Scratch day, I think, that we had,

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this little six year-old guy came in.

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On the upper end, I've been surprised
at, for example, the use of Scratch

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in college classes like CS50
because we didn't really

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think of Scratch as a language for
teaching computer science to computer

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scientists.

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>> Another surprise is how
many adults are using it.

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We found that people who are
like full-time programmers

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enjoy programming in
Scratch as sort of a hobby.

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And so we've seen people
on the Scratch website

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create projects that do, for example,
ray tracing 3-D rendering systems.

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I couldn't believe it when I saw that.

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>> MITCH RESNICK: As we
started to work on Scratch,

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we want to make it different from
previous programming languages

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in order to make it accessible
to a much wider range of people.

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So we had three core guiding principles.

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First, we want to make
it more tinker-able,

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so you could build up programs much
like putting Lego bricks together.

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So we had the visual programming
blocks that snap together.

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Second of all, we want
to let people work

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on more meaningful projects, things
that were personally relevant for them.

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That's why we make
Scratch so media-rich.

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>> Third of all, we want to make
it more social because you

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know a lot of the best
learning experiences

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come when we interact with others.

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So we added the Scratch online
community from the very beginning,

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right when we launched the
software so that people

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would have an audience
for their creations

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and also get inspired by
what other people created.

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Since we launched Scratch, there
have been around 4.5 million projects

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that have been shared
on the Scratch website.

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>> JOHN MALONEY: So I
actually joined the project

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by sort of pleading to Mitchell.

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I asked to join when I heard
about it because I thought

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it was going to be such a cool
thing, and I wanted to help.

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But my favorite language
was Smalltalk, and I

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had helped develop this version
of Smalltalk called Squeak.

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So I said, well, I'll
come and do this work

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as long as I can build it in Squeak.

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And Mitchell said, oh sure, I
don't care what it's made in.

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Just make it work.

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And so that's how it got
to be written in Squeak.

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>> So with Scratch 2.0, we
thought that we would

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try to make Scratch reach out to more
people by making it a cloud-based app.

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And although there was a version
of Squeak that ran in the browser,

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it required downloading
and installing a plug-in.

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And we knew that a lot of people
would have trouble doing that,

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either because it was
a complicated process

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or because their administration at their
school or whatever wouldn't allow it.

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So we wanted something that was
kind of built into the browsers

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or was kind of by default
there on most browsers.

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>> We considered Java.

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We considered Silverlight.

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We considered JavaScript,
and we considered Flash.

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At that point, Flash was
really on the ascendancy.

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Adobe was really pushing it, and
we didn't yet know, you know,

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that it was going to be such a problem
on iOS and mobile devices and so forth.

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So we went with Flash, and
in retrospect, you know,

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it would've maybe been nicer
if we'd gone with JavaScript

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because that's become
the dominant language.

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>> But I don't think there's
any way we could possibly

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have seen all the things that were
going to change between then and now.

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It takes three years or so to
put together something like this,

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so you make your best guess
and hope for the best.

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>> MITCH RESNICK: One of our new
projects is called Scratch Junior,

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trying to have Scratch go
down to even younger kids.

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It's being aimed at age
five to seven year-olds,

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like kindergarten to second grade.

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The first version of
it will be on the iPod,

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and we plan to have it come
out in the middle of 2014.

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So Scratch Junior will be a
somewhat scaled down version.

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It'll have somewhat
fewer features and also

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make things more developmentally
appropriate for younger kids.

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>> JOHN MALONEY: I enjoy the fact
that Scratch 2.0 especially

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is sort of secretly higher
performance than you might imagine.

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By default, when you're doing
animations and so forth,

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you're limited to the frame
rate of the-- sort of the update

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rate of the screen, and we've
designed it deliberately

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so that it only does
a little bit per frame

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so that if you say repeat
10 move 10, you actually

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see it move in 10 little
step-- 10 little increments.

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>> However, there's a sort of
hidden mode, called turbo mode,

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which you can get by
Shift-Clicking on the green flag,

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and that basically lets it
run kind of as fast as it can.

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So this is what lets you do
things like the ray tracer,

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and you don't have to--
the original ray tracer,

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you had to wait about half an
hour to see the results because it

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was kind of chugging
through one frame at a time.

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But with the Shift-Click
thing, you can get the results

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in something like 20 seconds.

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So, all of a sudden, you can do sort
of high level things in Scratch,

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but it's a hidden feature.

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