Welcome

This book is intended for educators wanting to learn Scratch, a pedagogical programming language and multimedia programming environment developed at MIT to help anyone learn the basic concepts and skills of computer science. Scratch is currently in its third version, and can be used both online or as a desktop application. The online version can be reached at https://scratch.mit.edu, and can be accessed through your browser on any internet-connected computer. If you set up an account, your work will be stored in the cloud, and you can return to it at any time, from any machine you log in with. The desktop version can be downloaded from https://scratch.mit.edu/download and is available for Windows, MacOS, ChromeOS, and Andriod. You do not need a Scratch account to use the desktop version, and projects created with it are stored on your local computer, not the cloud. Finally, if you are using this book for a K-State class, you will complete your assignments using a version of Scratch embedded in Codio. All three versions of Scratch are nearly identical, and we’ll call out what differences exist as we cover Scratch’s features.

Scratch builds upon a long history of teaching programming and computational thinking in schools, including the LOGO programming language and the work of Seymor Papert and the Squeak/eToys programming system. It incorporates many best practices and ideas derived from this proud history.