Thanks to the ICT Guy’s post about their professional learning day with Scratch – Creating Games with Scratch – I have been reminded to look into this great creative tool.
SCRATCH is a new programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art — and share your creations on the web.
Scratch is designed to help young people (ages 8 and up) develop 21st century learning skills. As they create Scratch projects, young people learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also gaining a deeper understanding of the process of design.
Scratch is available free of charge, go to Download, and there are support documents available to get you underway.
Help turn your kids from media consumers into media producers, with their next Scratch project!!
judyoconnell.com 
Just added this app to they year 9+ computing labs. Will use this in a mash up with Google Sketch Up next term as a project. Let a few kids toy with it this week and it’s a real winner. Thanks for the tip off.
Hi Darrel, this is great feedback!!! I also thought that it wouldn’t take much for the students to get ‘involved’ (wrote on Andrew’s blog) – and really wouldn’t plan for training sessions, but an introductory lesson. But as I haven’t used the program I was just guessing (based on the speed at which students seem to get ‘stuck into’ interactive software these days). So it looks like Scratch is a great bit of gaming technology to explore – and since we know that gaming is a powerful way of engaging learners, then Scratch has got to be on the right track for us all. 🙂
Hi Andrew,
We have 10 to 12 years olds creating playable games in their first two hours of using scratch!
It has a very low entry point but also a very high ceiling to extend all learners 🙂
Hi Judy. I’m planning to have my Year 7 students use Scratch next term to complete an integrated science project about alternative energy sources. In your experience, how many 1-hour training sessions do you think I’ll need to give my students before they can begin working on their science assignments? (By the way, I haven’t played with Scratch yet. I’ve downloaded it and will teach myself how to use it over the upcoming school holidays. Can’t wait.)