As we are slowly waking up to the importance of coding and programming languages here in India, a group back in the US realized the inevitability of coding as early as 16 years back. And this realization was not based on the scope of coding for adults but for kids over 8 years. Yes, MIT Lab’s Lifelong Kindergarden Group developed a visual programming language targeted at teaching coding to kids in 2002 that made its first appearance in the year 2007. Designed to help kids understand coding concepts and programming languages, the visual tool for ages 8 and above allows kids to think, analyze, collaborate and imagine a virtual world simultaneously learning digital concepts.
The Scratch database has over 22 million users (registered) who use the tool to impart computational skills, coding abilities, computer science, and also use it as a creative medium to teach math, science, art, geography and other subjects. Used at schools, houses and afterschool programs, Scratch is one of the go-to mediums for all things educational. There are more than 2 million projects shared and approximately 25,000 new users and 30,000 new projects are generated every single day.
How Scratch Helps Your Kid Develop New Skills:
Before we talk about how Scratch helps your kid learn coding, do check out this very insightful video – a TED Talk – on why we should teach coding to kids. Once you see the video, you will understand why coding is not an ancillary subject your kid should focus on but one of the core strengths he or she should develop. When it comes to Scratch, the tool gives your kid the much required early exposure to your kids to the world of coding. As you know, coding is one of those topics that is difficult for adults to understand, considering the amount of concepts on functions, commands, conditions and more.
What Scratch does is it takes a step-by-step approach and a more visual one to teach kids coding concepts. It uses gamification to let kids design games, stories, animation and more based on a myriad of computing concepts and share them with other kids. Apart from being used in elementary schools, Scratch is also popular among college and high school kids, where a number of project works and studies are done using Scratch.
Apart from coding, Scratch is an amazing tool for storytelling. Imaginative stories from your kids aside, it is one of the best avenues for afterschool courses and centers to visually tell complex scientific concepts like plant mitosis, dual nature of particles, osmosis, photoelectric effect, water cycle and more through simple-to-design and present animations. A number of quizzes, games, puzzles and tutorials can be developed by kids and educators to expose them to knowledge that is beyond textbooks.
One of the other major strengths of Scratch is its online userbase. The community is very active and there are kids from around the world working on several project and sharing them online every day. With Scratch, the time your kid spends in front of a computer screen is not just channelized into something that is productive and reflective in academics but actually something that is working at his or her psychological levels, developing newer skills and abilities. To get started with Scratch coding for your kid, get in touch with us today.