Major: Scratch 2.0: Cultivating Creativity and Collaboration in the Cloud

专业：Scratch 2.0：在云中培养创造力和协作麻省理工学院媒体实验室的研究人员将开发和研究新一代的Scratch编程平台，旨在帮助年轻人学习创造性思维，系统推理和协同工作-这是21世纪成功的基本技能。有了Scratch，年轻人（8岁及以上）可以编写自己的互动故事、游戏、动画和模拟，然后在网上与他人分享他们的创作。世界各地的年轻人已经在Scratch社区网站（http://scratch.mit.edu）上分享了超过100万个项目。新一代被称为Scratch 2.0，它将完全融入互联网，这样年轻人就可以更无缝地在项目上分享和协作，访问在线数据，并与社交媒体进行互动。这项研究分为两部分：-创造性合作的技术基础设施。有了Scratch 2.0，人们将能够设计和编程新型的基于web的交互和服务。例如，他们将能够编程与社交媒体网站（如Facebook）的交互，使用在线数据创建可视化，以及编写自己的协作应用程序。-为创造性合作设计实验。随着团队开发Scratch 2.0，他们将运行在线实验，研究他们的设计决策如何影响人们在创意项目上的合作方式，以及他们对合作的态度。这项工作建立在以前支持Scratch开发的NSF资助（ITR-0325828）的基础上。自2007年公开发布以来，Scratch已经成为一个充满活力的在线社区，年轻人在这里编程并分享互动故事、游戏、动画和模拟，并在此过程中学习重要的计算概念和设计、解决问题和协作的策略。每天，Scratch社区的成员向网站上传近1500个新的Scratch项目——平均而言，几乎每分钟就有一个新项目。在开发Scratch 2.0的过程中，团队将重点关注来自NSF项目征集的两个问题：-这项研究是否会导致支持人类创造力的新技术的发展？-这项研究是否会在计算机科学、科学或工程领域带来奖励创造力的创新教育方法？知识价值。这个项目的智力价值是基于它对新技术如何促进创造力和协作的研究。研究人员将进行设计实验，以检验Scratch 2.0的新功能如何吸引年轻人参与创造性表达、协作、学习和元设计的新形式。年轻人已经开始与许多基于云的服务（如YouTube和Facebook）互动。但是Scratch 2.0从根本上是不同的，因为它的目标是让人们参与到他们自己的云项目和活动中来。有了Scratch 2.0，年轻人赢了？我只是与云交互，他们将在云中创造。其目标是使基于云的活动的开发民主化，这样每个人都可以成为云的积极贡献者，而不仅仅是基于云的服务的消费者。Scratch 2.0的开发和研究将为吸引年轻人参与培养协作和创造力的活动带来新的见解。更广泛的影响。这个项目更广泛的影响是基于它扩大编程和计算机科学参与的能力。与其他编程平台相比，当前版本的Scratch已经帮助吸引了更广泛的计算机科学学生。研究人员希望Scratch 2.0的协作和社交媒体功能能够与当今年轻人的兴趣产生共鸣，并进一步扩大参与范围。将Scratch整合到哈佛大学的计算机科学入门课程中，使得放弃这门课程的学生数量大幅减少，而女学生的留校率则有所提高。在大学预科课程中也有类似的结果。国家妇女信息技术中心（NCWIT）称Scratch为一种？有前途的实践?促进资讯科技业的性别多元化。

Major: Scratch 2.0: Cultivating Creativity and Collaboration in the CloudInvestigators from the MIT Media Lab will develop and study a new generation of the Scratch programming platform, designed to help young people learn to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively -- essential skills for success in the 21st century. With Scratch, young people (ages 8 and up) can program their own interactive stories, games, animations, and simulations, then share their creations with others online. Young people around the world have already shared more than 1 million projects on the Scratch community website (http://scratch.mit.edu). The new generation, called Scratch 2.0, will be fully integrated into the Internet, so that young people can more seamlessly share and collaborate on projects, access online data, and program interactions with social media.The research is divided into two strands:-Technological infrastructure for creative collaboration. With Scratch 2.0, people will be able to design and program new types of web-based interactions and services. For example, they will be able to program interactions with social-media websites (such as Facebook), create visualizations with online data, and program their own collaborative applications.-Design experiments for creative collaboration. As the team develops Scratch 2.0, they will run online experiments to study how their design decisions influence the ways in which people collaborate on creative projects, as well as their attitudes towards collaboration.This work builds on a previous NSF grant (ITR-0325828) that supported the development of Scratch. Since its public launch in 2007, Scratch has become a vibrant online community, in which young people program and share interactive stories, games, animations, and simulations - and, in the process, learn important computational concepts and strategies for designing, problem solving, and collaborating. Each day, members of the Scratch community upload nearly 1500 new Scratch projects to the website - on average, a new project almost every minute.In developing Scratch 2.0, the team will focus on two questions from the NSF Program Solicitation:-Will the research lead to the development of new technologies to support human creativity?-Will the research lead to innovative educational approaches in computer science, science, or engineering that reward creativity?Intellectual Merit. The intellectual merit of the project is based on its study of how new technologies can foster creativity and collaboration. The investigators will conduct design experiments to examine how new features of Scratch 2.0 engage young people in new forms of creative expression, collaboration, learning, and metadesign. Young people are already interacting with many cloud-based services (such as YouTube and Facebook). But Scratch 2.0 is fundamentally different in that it aims to engage people in programming their own projects and activities in the cloud. With Scratch 2.0, young people won?t just interact with the cloud, they will create in the cloud. The goal is to democratize the development of cloud-based activities, so that everyone can become an active contributor to the cloud, not just a consumer of cloud-based services. This development and study of Scratch 2.0 will lead to new insights into strategies for engaging young people in activities that cultivate collaboration and creativity. Broader Impacts. The broader impact of the project is based on its ability to broaden participation in programming and computer science. The current version of Scratch has already helped attract a broader diversity of students to computer science compared to other programming platforms. The investigators expect that the collaboration and social-media features of Scratch 2.0 will resonate with the interests of today's youth and further broaden participation. Integration of Scratch into the introductory computer science course at Harvard led to a sharp reduction in the number of students dropping the course, and an increase in the retention of female students. There have been similar results in pre-college courses. The National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) calls Scratch a ?promising practice? for increasing gender diversity in IT.