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Can kids program games? YES!
From June 22 to 26th, we held our summer workshop Scratching the Surface and, among other things, taught seven kids how to code using MIT Scratch. During the first two days, the kids developed and published their own Scratch games. Scratch’s intuitive drag and drop interface made it easy for the kids to start making projects right away. As they built their games, they hit a few challenges that taught them to think like a programmer by breaking down complex problems into simpler ones.
The kids made many different projects over the course of the week. Some of them thought up of project ideas on the spot, while others had ideas floating around in their heads for years until now that they were able to get it all out onto something tangible. You won’t believe the creativity of the games these kids have made.
Play as Sir cat and fight off the evil flaming ghoul. Save the tiny tower as the heroic Bownzwad. Catch apples falling from airplanes. Shoot cannonballs at stars. Run away from ghosts in the terror theater. Face off in a dance competition. These kids’ imaginations were truly limitless and now you can see what they’ve made in the Tech 101 Kids Scratch Studio.
I’ll close off with this: why did we have kids program games using drag and drop? Shouldn’t we have cracked open the Java and C++ books and had them learn real programming languages so they can start coding useful things for society right away?
Well….
A big part of learning something is staying motivated to learn it. And a big part of staying motivated is having an initial excitement that pushes you forward. By using Scratch, the kids were able to see the immediate results of their code. They saw that code could take something in their imaginations and make it a reality. All the innovations in the world today came when someone took something from their imagination and made it a reality. And once that attitude exists, it sticks. Once someone is activetly creating things they love, they want to keep creating more. Sure, today it’s making simple games, tomorrow it could be changing the world.