Lifelong Kindergarten Group

Research Projects

Color Code

Jay Silver Color Code allows anyone to program using colors in the real world. The result is that you can program a computer or a robot, or compose a musical score, just by drawing on a piece of paper with crayons. Of course it’s not limited to crayons. You could build your program with Lego bricks, arrange your program with the multi colored leaves of early Fall, or think of any collection of objects in the world as a program: from a striped shirt to a handful of M&Ms. In the limit, several interesting new programming concepts emerge from this paradigm: commands are no longer discrete and rigid but mixable and smearable; the program counter becomes visible, handheld, and nondeterministic; and when the color sensor becomes the program counter the application space and the programming space become intertwined. view site

Computer Clubhouse

Mitchel Resnick, Natalie Rusk, Chris Garrity, Claudia Urrea, Amon Millner, and Robbie Berg At Computer Clubhouse after-school centers, young people (ages 10-18) from low-income communities learn to express themselves creatively with new technologies. Clubhouse members work on projects based on their own interests, with support from adult mentors. By creating their own animations, interactive stories, music videos, and robotic constructions, Clubhouse members become more capable, confident, and creative learners. The first Computer Clubhouse was established in 1993, as a collaboration between the Lifelong Kindergarten group and The Computer Museum (now part of the Boston Museum of Science). With financial support from Intel Corporation, the network has expanded to more than 20 countries, serving more than 20,000 young people. The Lifelong Kindergarten group continues to develop new technologies, introduce new educational approaches, and lead professional-development workshops for Clubhouses around the world. view site

Computer Clubhouse Village

Chris Garrity, Natalie Rusk and Mitchel Resnick The Computer Clubhouse Village is an online community that connects people at Computer Clubhouse after-school centers around the world. Through the Village, Clubhouse members and staff (at more than 100 Clubhouses in 21 countries) can share ideas with one another, get feedback and advice on their projects, and work together on collaborative design activities.

Computer Crafting

Jay Silver, Karen Brennan and Mitchel Resnick Imagine that a full computer (with touch screen, sensors, keyboard, and everything else) was simply just another craft on your craft table. How would you use it? Computer crafting weaves together full computers with regular paper and markers, textiles, and everyday objects. By using computers as just another craft, the everyday world can be programmed and combined with computers. DesignBlocks Mitchel Resnick, Evelyn Eastmond, Eric Rosenbaum, Brian Silverman and Paula Bonta DesignBlocks is a derivative of the Scratch project that focuses on 2-dimensional digital design. With DesignBlocks, artists control lines, shapes, colors and images to create generative and interactive artworks. DesignBlocks uses the same visual grammar as Scratch, but uses a vocabulary more suited for graphic design. Inspired by Processing, DesignBlocks aims to make programming more accessible and suited to artists.

Drawdio

Jay Silver and Mitchel Resnick Drawdio is a pencil that draws music. You can sketch musical instruments on paper and play them with your finger. Touch your drawings to bring them to life—or collaborate through skin-to-skin contact. Drawdio works by creating electrical circuits with graphite and the human body. view site

Glowdoodle

Eric Rosenbaum Glowdoodle is free software for painting with light. In front of your webcam, just move a a glowing object, or anything brightly colored, and see the traces appear on the screen in real time. Then participate in the worldwide Glowdoodle community by sharing your creations on the web. view site

Hook-Ups

Amon Millner and Mitchel Resnick The Hook-Ups system is a set of technologies and activities that enables young people to create interactive experiences by programming connections between physical and digital media. With the Hook-Ups system, young people integrate sensors with a myriad of materials to create their own tangible interfaces. These interfaces control digital images and sounds in computer programs (such as games or responsive art pieces) the young people write. For example, a 10-year-old created a paper-plate-based flying saucer, added a sensor, then wrote a program to control an animation of a flying saucer on her computer screen. view site

Jots

Eric Rosenbaum and Mitchel Resnick How can we help people reflect on their own learning process? The goal of this project is to develop new technological tools and pedagogical strategies to cultivate reflection. Jots are brief updates that people write as they use our Scratch programming environment, to describe their thoughts, frustrations, and excitement. Users' Jots are displayed on their Scratch user pages, so they can explore their own processes and share them with others.

Mobile Scratch

John Maloney, Jay Silver, Karen Brennan, Andres Monroy-Hernandez and Mitchel Resnick We are developing a special version of our Scratch programming language to enable people to create, play, and share interactive media on mobile devices. Mobile Scratch is designed especially for interacting with the outside world, taking inputs from microphone, camera, and external sensors, and communicating with other mobile devices. We are running an initial pilot project at an innovative school serving children in low-income communities in India.

Say What?!

Karen Brennan, Shaundra Bryant Daily and Mitchel Resnick This project explores the relationship between empathy and civic engagement. We have designed and implemented a seven-part workshop to foster mutual understanding, collaborative problem-solving, and self-expression. The curriculum (which employs Scratch as a central tool) builds capacities in three areas: programming, storytelling, and perspective-taking. Throughout the workshop, participants use a variety of tools and techniques to engage in acts of personal expression by creating rich, interactive, multi-threaded narratives. view site

Scratch

Mitchel Resnick, John Maloney, Andres Monroy-Hernandez, Natalie Rusk, Karen Brennan, Eric Rosenbaum, Jay Silver, Ricarose Roque, Sayamindu Dasgupta, Amos Blanton, Michelle Chung, Claudia Urrea, Brian Silverman, and Paula Bonta Scratch is a programming language and online community that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, games, animations, and simulations—and share your creations online. Scratch is designed to enhance the technological fluency of young people (ages 8 and up), helping them learn to express themselves creatively with new technologies. As they create and share Scratch projects, young people learn to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively—while also learning important mathematical and computational ideas. view site

Scratch Board

Amon Millner, Robbie Berg, John Maloney and Mitchel Resnick With the Scratch Board, people can use sensors to control interactive stories and games that they create with the Scratch programming language. By connecting the physical and virtual, the Scratch Board extends the range of what people can design -- and extends what they learn in the process. The Scratch Board comes with several built-in sensors: a light sensor, sound sensor, touch sensor, and slider. It also has four ports where you can plug in your own resistance-based sensors. For example, you can create a Scratch program that controls music and animation on the computer based on your interactions with sensors connected to the Scratch Board. view site

Scratch Day

Karen Brennan and Mitchel Resnick Scratch Day is a network of face-to-face local gatherings, on the same day in all parts of the world, where people can meet, share, and learn more about Scratch, a programming environment that enables people to create their own interactive stories, games, animations, and simulations. We believe that these types of face-to-face interactions remain essential for ensuring the accessibility and sustainability of initiatives such as Scratch. In-person interactions enable richer forms of communication among individuals, more rapid iteration of ideas, and a deeper sense of belonging and participation in a community. The first Scratch Day took place on May 16, 2009, with 120 events in 44 different countries. The second Scratch Day took place on May 22, 2010. view site

Scratch for Computer Science

John Maloney and Mitchel Resnick Although we designed Scratch primarily as a means for personal expression, a growing number of high schools and colleges (including Harvard and Berkeley) are using Scratch as an introduction to computer science and programming. The Scratch4CS project explores the question: "Can we extend Scratch so that it is suitable for a full-semester introduction to programming and computational thinking?" This question is particularly relevant now since there are several initiatives underway to rethink introductory computer science courses and advanced-placement exams.

Scratch Worlds

Eric Rosenbaum and Mitchel Resnick What if everyone could create their own interactive content in virtual worlds? We are putting the playful and intuitive features of Scratch into a new programming language for Second Life. We hope to make it easier for everyone to create their own interactive virtual pets, dancefloors, games, clothing, houses, and whatever else they can imagine.

ScratchEd

Karen Brennan, Michelle Chung, and Mitchel Resnick As Scratch proliferates through the world, there is a growing need to support learners. But for teachers, educators, and others who are primarily concerned with enabling Scratch learning, there is a disconnect between their needs and the resources that are presently available through the Scratch Web site. ScratchEd is an online environment for Scratch educators to share stories, exchange resources, ask questions, and find people. view site

ScratchR

Andres Monroy-Hernandez and Mitchel Resnick ScratchR is a platform for sharing programmable media online, allowing people to publish their own interactive stories, games, and animations. ScratchR is the engine behind the Scratch online community, a social network of young programmers. Unlike other user-generated content communities, ScratchR makes it easy to reuse other people's creations to foster collaborative learning. ScratchR allows members to rate, comment, tag, and create galleries. ScratchR is to programmable media what YouTube is to videos. view site

Singing Fingers

Eric Rosenbaum, Jay Silver and Mitchel Resnick Singing Fingers allows children to fingerpaint with sound. Users paint by touching a screen with a finger, but color only emerges if a sound is made at the same time. By touching the painting again, users can play back the sound. This creates a new level of accessibility for recording, playback, and remixing of sound.

Twinkle

Jay Silver, Eric Rosenbaum and Mitchel Resnick Twinkle is a new system that lets you program using crayons, LEGO bricks, or anything that has colors -- like a striped shirt or fall leaves. Compose a song with markers, program a robot by drawing instructions on paper, or create a custom interface just by doodling.

What's Up

Chris Csikszentmihályi, Mitchel Resnick and Leo Burd What's Up is a neighborhood news system that combines power of the telephone and of the Web to make it easier for youth to organize community events and find out what is happening in the place where they live. By dialing a central number, youth can send and receive voicemail messages, publish audio community announcements, create voicemail groups, add events to a shared community calendar and more. When field tested in Lawrence, MA, What's Up helped increase awareness of and accessibility to important local youth resources, provided youth with opportunities to express their opinions about their neighborhoods and, with that, contributed to transform Lawrence into a community that is both friendlier and more empowering for young people. view site