Source-linked AI summary
Empowering Kids to Create and Share Programmable Media
Andrés Monroy-Hernández, Mitchel Resnick
TL;DR
Web 2.0 enables people to create and share many kinds of media, but comparatively few can create and share interactive content. This article reflects on Scratch’s programming environment and online community as a model for participatory learning. Scratch supports multiple participation states and creative appropriation, while producing interactive content is presented as supporting digital literacy and learning skills.
Problem
Few people can create and share interactive Web content despite widespread interaction with online animations and games.
Method
The article reflects on Scratch’s design rationale and learning theories, including a four-state model of participation in user-generated-content communities.
Results
Scratch users create, share, interact with, download, and modify projects while building on one another’s ideas and projects.
Takeaways & Limitations
Producing interactive content is presented as a key ingredient of digital literacy and as supporting creative thinking, communication, analysis, experimentation, iterative design, and continual learning.
Abstract
from arXiv · showhide
This article reflects on the first eight months of existence of the Scratch Online Community by discussing the design rationale and learning theories underlying Scratch and its website.
INTRODUCTION
Scratch addresses the limited ability of people, especially children and teens, to create and share interactive Web content. Its environment and website support programming, creative expression, learning, and participation by enabling users to build, share, inspect, and modify projects.
- Few people can create and share interactive content even though Web users regularly interact with online animations and games.
- Scratch uses graphical programming blocks so children and teens can create interactive stories, games, and animations with rich media.
- Users upload creations to the Scratch website, where others can interact with projects and download their source code to examine or modify them.
- The website presents the Web as a platform for creating and sharing personally meaningful projects, rather than simply accessing information.
- Producing interactive content supports creative thinking, effective communication, critical analysis, systematic experimentation, iterative design, and continual learning.
LEARNING THROUGH ONLINE COMMUNITY
The Scratch Online Community makes programming a social activity by supporting varied participation roles, from browsing and metadata contributions to project creation and active collaboration. Activity and project creation are linked, while community members build on one another’s work.
- Scratch supports four participation states: passive consumption, active consumption, passive production, and active production.
- Passive consumer: Passive consumers browse categories and interact with others’ projects, while their views are counted and displayed publicly.
- Active consumer: Active consumers contribute metadata by commenting, tagging, and rating projects.
- Passive producer: Passive producers create projects, sometimes inspired by community projects, without necessarily feeling ready or compelled to share them.
- Active producer: Active producers contribute projects, feedback, and inspiration, and project creation correlates with comments, views, favorites, appreciations, and downloads on others’ projects.
SHARING AND COLLABORATION
Scratch’s online community is designed to support learning by building on others’ ideas and projects. Sharing source code, remixing, and attribution make creative appropriation visible and encourage new projects.
- SHARING AND COLLABORATION: Creative appropriation means using someone else’s creative work to make a new work, an approach Scratch presents as rewarding community-based learning.
- SHARING AND COLLABORATION: The community fosters learning from others by making projects’ source code downloadable and encouraging members to build on existing ideas.
- SHARING AND COLLABORATION: More than 150 projects were tagged “dress up,” showing how an idea from one project generated a recurring community trend.
- SHARING AND COLLABORATION: 15 percent of 23,394 shared projects were remixes, ranging from altered images and sounds to modified programming code.
- SHARING AND COLLABORATION: Project metadata automatically links remixes to their originals and credits the original creator, supporting discussion of sharing and plagiarism.
MESH INC.
Mesh Inc. illustrates how Scratch users organize collaborative production around shared projects. Members contributed animation, programming, writing, design, and organizational work, while others formed similar groups.
- MESH INC.: BeeBop initiated collaboration by offering animated sprites for others’ projects and responding to requests for custom assets.
- MESH INC.: MusicalMoon organized Mesh Inc. as a Scratch “miniature company” that reviewed submissions and assigned membership.
- MESH INC.: Hobbit joined as a programmer, fixed a game’s jumping problem, and created a blog listing Mesh Inc. members and roles.
- MESH INC.: Mesh Inc. attracted auditions, distributed roles across members, and inspired other Scratch users to create similar companies.
APPENDIX: USAGE STATISTICS
Scratch’s early community grew rapidly after launch, with broad international reach and substantial project, script, sprite, and discussion activity. Usage data also examined who participated and how engagement related to age and gender.
- APPENDIX: USAGE STATISTICS: The site launched on May 14, 2007, and traffic quickly overwhelmed the server, causing several outages.
- APPENDIX: USAGE STATISTICS: By December 9, 2007, the site recorded 10,373,606 page views, 1,708,857 sessions, and 1,176,042 unique visitors.
- APPENDIX: USAGE STATISTICS: Users had created 915,489 scripts and 317,142 sprites by December 9, 2007.
- APPENDIX: USAGE STATISTICS: By December 9, 2007, Scratch had 53,639 registered members and 56,352 shared projects.
- APPENDIX: USAGE STATISTICS: Visitors came from 213 countries, while London generated the most visits despite most users being from the United States.
- APPENDIX: USAGE STATISTICS: Users were primarily ages 8 to 17, peaking at age 12, and some adults acted as mentors for beginners.
- APPENDIX: USAGE STATISTICS: Age was not correlated with project count, forum posts, new threads, or number of friends.
- APPENDIX: USAGE STATISTICS: Although 70 percent of users were male, gender was not significantly correlated with the number of projects.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
The authors bring expertise in social software, creative and collaborative learning, and educational technologies that engage children and teens.
- Andrés Monroy-Hernández led development of the Scratch online community and studies social software for creative and collaborative learning.He is a Ph.D. student and Samsung Fellow at the MIT Media Lab.
- Mitchel Resnick is a professor at the MIT Media Lab who explores technologies for creative learning experiences among children and teens.
- Resnick’s Lifelong Kindergarten group developed Scratch and other educational technologies, including programmable bricks used in robotics kits.
- Resnick cofounded the Computer Clubhouse network, which has more than 100 sites in 20 countries.