Tools+for+Creative+Thinking

Tools for Creative Thinking
//Dr. Mitchel Resnick, Associate Professor at the MIT Media Laboratory, Cambridge, MA// Mitchel shared two exciting tools he helped create to foster creativity in the educational world. He proposed that the practices of kindergarten should be pulled up to higher grades, fostering creative thought and developing the design process in students. His project, [|Lifelong Kindergarten] does this. The [|'Cricket'] is a programmable box that can be attached to inanimate objects to make it do things. The computer beams the instructions to the tiny computer and the object can be made to spin, light up, or play music.You can plug lights, motors, sensors, and other devices into a PicoCricket, then program them to react, interact, and communicate. Mitchel shared a cat that when petted, meowed. He explained how the project developed Lego [|Mindstorms] originally, but they wanted something that would appeal to all students, so Cricket was created. This helped students he called ‘patternists’ and ‘dramatists’ learn programming. Cricket is programming in the physical world. The next step was to create software for programming that would control media on the computer.[|Scratch] was born. Scratch is a computer program created for kids of all ages to teach the basics of programming. Programming does not have to be textual - this is a visual representation of a program. "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.” It is free and the application can be run from the web. The collaboration that results when the kids start exploring each others’ creations, adapting and improving them is amazing! Over 20,000 projects have been created in the two months since Scratch started. It is Mitchel’s cycle cloud in practice!

Here's a brief video (3 minutes) featuring Mitchel Resnick describing Scratch.

Tools for Creative Thinking
//Dr. Mitchel Resnick, Associate Professor at the MIT Media Laboratory, Cambridge, MA// media type="youtube" key="knFykmLljos" width="425" height="350"