December has just begun, but plans for Scratch Day 2012 are well underway. Scratch Day (May 19, 2012) is a group of community based events where parents, teachers, and/or kids come together to promote and learn about the Scratch programming language.

Here’s some stats to illustrate Scratch Day’s reach from the Scratch Day website.

• In 2011, there were 126 events in 36 different countries.
• In 2010, there were 120 events in 40 different countries.
• In 2009, there were 120 events in 44 different countries.

For the last two years, I’ve attended the OLPC Learning Club DC Scratch Day event in Arlington, VA to help facilitate a workshop with the students. I never stop being amazed at how quickly kids adapt to Scratch and how quickly they become skilled Scratchers. Jeff Elkner, Mike Lee and the OLPC Learning Club are great hosts; they even surprised me last year with a XO laptop. If you’re in the northern Virginia area, you’ll enjoy this event.

This year it looks like Scratch Day is coming back to Pennsylvania. Scratch Day Philadelphia is being organized by Quinn Burke. I attended Scratch Day Pennsylvania in 2009 at the Abington Friends School where I met another group of great people, including Quinn.

Scratch Day Resources

The Scratch team publishes a list of Scratch Day resources. Of course, my book Scratch 1.4 Beginner’s Guide offers many scratch programming ideas and solutions to help you develop workshops.

It’s not too early to plan your Scratch Day. It’s a lot of fun. Where will you be?

I never like to describe Scratch as a computer programming language, but it’s the easiest descriptor there is. The problem, of course, is that computer programming, turns adults and kids away equally as fast.

In this NY Times article, “Programming for Children, Minus Cryptic Syntax,” Mitch Resnick offers this perspective:

“We shouldn’t think of programming narrowly as a tool for a professional activity but as a means of expression,” he said.

“Our goal is not just for kids to grow up and get jobs as programmers. We feel that everyone should be able to express themselves with online media.”

And expression takes many creative forms, including stories, games, and multimedia. That’s the obvious stuff. But learning to express yourself with a computer programming language reinforces the skills needed to survive day-to-day, even for those art-driven and wordy-type people: logic, thoughtful analysis, and the thrill of building something cool.

I know that there are a fair number of people who are not interested in thoughtful analysis. Their work shows it.

Scratch brings together something that we often encounter in the business world. We start with a goal (an expression) that we must achieve in a given set of rules. And the rules can be anything from market conditions to industry or company policies to tools, such as Scratch.

So, when we tell our class, our workshop, or our kids to “tell me the story of your vacation to the beach using Scratch,” we’re providing a fun environment to develop problem solving skills. Oh, and they can work on their language skills, too.

In 2010, Google announced its App Inventor development environment, a graphical environment for building Android apps. The project has its roots in Scratch.

According to a press release, Google open sourced App Inventor and donated the project to MIT Media Lab. I guess you could say the project came home. The App Inventor announcement was in the context of the new MIT Center for Mobile Learning, which will be “dedicated to transforming education and learning through innovation in mobile computing.” Time will tell what that means, exactly.

I’m wondering what the future holds for App Inventor. Will it be typecast as an educational too? Will it serve a broader user/business application? Will programmers adopt it as a viable programming language?

I dig Scratch and think App Inventor could be a wonderful companion, especially if App Inventor can have some practical application. In other words, it seems it would provide a logical progression from the strictly educational/fun application of Scratch.

I’m watching closely for the next news. Maybe it’s time to start thinking about my next book.

I’m going back to Arlington this year to participate in the OLPC Learning Club DC’s Scratch Day event. Not only has my publisher donated some books for raffle, but Mike Lee hints to a really cool prize, “we have a special raffle prize related to robotics!”

Also from the Learning Club’s announcement, Mike Lee says, “We also expect to be able to demonstrate Scratch 1.4 running on the OLPC XO-1 laptop with support for the built-in camera and the Journal file system.”

If you’re in the neighborhood, I’d strongly recommend you stop by the Arlington Career Center. The young scratchers’ talents and capabilities are truly amazing. Click for more details.

Scratch Day 2011 is approaching and that has me on the lookout for an event near me. I came across a fun game theme from the TechPlayZone in Riverview, Florida. The rules are simple, bring an original game, consisting of one sprite and one script to the event. The game and design must be original and it must be a win or lose theme.

Though I’m too far away from this event, I like the theme and the idea and will be filing this away in my workshop ideas.

Picoboards are a great way to extend Scratch’s interactivity and to stimulate Scratch projects. The Picobard can measure resistance, light, sound, button clicks, and slider position and communicate those values to Scratch for use in our computer programs.

In chapter 10 of Scratch 1.4: Beginner’s Guide, I walk through programming examples for each Picoboard function. However, I just found the Science Buddies website that includes a few science projects that incorporate Scratch programming and the Picoboard:

• Pinwheel Magic: Take a Spin with Animation
• Create Your Own Chemistry Color-analysis Tools

Looks like some fun and educational uses that I will file away for my next available need.

Click here for Picoboard on Linux installation information.

The ScratchEd site posted a short video showing Mitch Resnick leading a Scratch programming challenge, “Diving Deeper.” In the workshop, he hands out short instructions to the class, such as,”Whenever you click on the background, a flower appears at that spot.”

I like the bite-sized approach. Here’s a short video of a challenge in action.

Diving Deeper with Scratch:

You can view the entire Scratch programming challenge, here.

I’ve had a series of questions recently from teachers looking to switch their introduction to computer programming classes over to scratch. They, of course, want a textbook and have been asking how to receive an evaluation of Scractch 1.4 Beginner’s Guide.

I think it’s great to see the interest in using Scratch as an introduction language, and I especially like the inquiries about the book. Evaluation copies can be requested direct from Packt Publishing.

Of course, I also make some some sample chapters available. Here’s chapter 7, the fortune teller. It covers lists (aka arrays), mod, and if-else.

The basic introduction to Scratch programming (first half of chapter 2) is here. Here’s the second half of the introduction to Scratch.

Here are some great thoughts by Chris Betcher about why programming benefits everyone, including the kids who aren’t destined to become programmers.

Over the past 20 years I’ve taught quite a lot of programming to children and without fail it’s something they get a real kick out of.  They really seem to engage with the big ideas of programming – problem solving, thinking mathematically and using logic and reasoning. It’s the practical application of those ideas and the creative thinking required to solve authentic problems that forms the basis of a truly engaging learning experience.

While I don’t believe that everyone necessarily needs to become a computer programmer, I do think that everyone would benefit from learning the basic skills and mental gymnastics required to write simple computer programs.  I’ve found it to be an incredibly useful skill, and the underlying understanding it gives into computers and how they do what they do has come in really handy over the years.

Of course, Chris touts Scratch as a great language to show your kids how to write computer programs. Problem solving is a skill that transcends disciplines; you need to be able to think logically whether  you code or raise chickens.

Packt Publishing, the publisher of Scratch 1.4 Beginner’s Guide, is now making ebooks available in epub format. The change is compatible with iPad users, Nook readers, and a variety of other devices.

If you act before July 31, 2010, you can order a copy of Scratch 1.4 Beginner’s Guide directly from Packt at 50% off the cover price. Use the promo code “epub0710″.

You can read Phil Shapiro’s review at PC World.