Broadening Participation at the Scratch@MIT Conference

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In 2003, the PI's research group at the MIT Media Lab was awarded a four-year grant from the National Science Foundation (ITR-0325828) to develop a new programming environment, called Scratch, that enables young people to create their own interactive stories, games, animations, and simulations - and share their creations with one another online. The Scratch website (http://scratch.mit.edu), launched in May 2007, has become a vibrant online community, with 500,000 registered members sharing, discussing, and remixing one another's projects.This summer, the Scratch group is hosting a conference, called Scratch@MIT, for educators, researchers, developers, and others who support the use of Scratch, so that they can share best practices with one another (see http://scratch.mit.edu/conference). The PI previously hosted one similar Scratch conference, in July 2008 at MIT. The conference attracted great interest: registration reached full capacity of 300 people a full month before the conference. The Scratch group is increasing the maximum number of participants for this summer's conference to 350 people, and they again expect to reach full capacity.Intellectual Merit. As young people program and share Scratch projects, they learn to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively - essential skills for success in the 21st century. Educators attending the Scratch@MIT conference will have the opportunity to participate in hands-on workshops, share experiences and ideas, and learn about new techniques and strategies, so that they are better able to support and facilitate student learning with Scratch in their own educational contexts.Broader Impact. Since Scratch software is available free of charge, it has attracted a broad and diverse community of users. The investigators want to make sure that participation at the Scratch@MIT conference is similarly broad and diverse. They realize that registration fees and travel costs could make it difficult for some people to participate in the conference. With this support they will waive registration fees for 50 conference participants who would not otherwise be able to attend. They expect that this will allow participation by more educators from public schools and community centers (who typically have less access to funding than researchers or teachers from private schools). By making the conference accessible to those who could not otherwise afford the registration fees, they expect an increase in the overall diversity of participants at the conference.