Simple Programming and Creativity

I fell in love with Lego Mindstorms before it even hit the coasts of North America. I found out a lot of information when they were available in Europe and emailed the Canadian arm of the company and tried to convince them to let us order them and serve as a sort of pilot school. They told me I had to wait until I could buy them here. When they finally did show up, I convinced our school to purchase six sets and I ran a club for students at lunchtimes several days a week. We had a great time.

This tool was different. It was powerful and easy to use. It was more about science and programming then anything I had seen up to that point. Students learned a lot of programming pieces and skills, they also learned a lot about things like cause and effect and being creative in logical ways. I still love the Mindstorms even though I don't have the newer version of the kit (although I would dearly love to lay my hands on about six of them).

But lately I have been noticing an increasing amount of software that allows students to work in ways that are both creative and logical. Telling stories in new ways and with new tools. The best part about most of this stuff is that it is all free and from trusted sources.

Alice: New to me, Alice is similar to Scratch in that they are both meant to produce animations. Alice comes from Cornell and includes both a high school / college level programming environment and another, easier to use version called Storytelling Alice. Once again, free to download and free to use.

Phun: Phun is just that. I wrote a post on it earlier this fall after an amazing first experience with it. Phun is described as a 2 - D physics environment, but once again, it pushes students to be creative and logical, using the physics that they may know intuitively to design some amazing things.

Scratch: This software has been around for a few years and comes from MIT, the source of Mindstorms. It follows the same drag and drop interface as the Lego product, but to produce animations. It is easy to use and can allow for you to program your own blocks and pieces and allow you to use your own voice and sounds. Scratch has also built up a commuity around the software, allowing anyone to upload animations they have created to their website, allowing others to watch them. Interestingly, you can also download these animations and use the code behind them to extend and build upon them, a perfect way for kids to extend their skills.

All of this needs to remind us that there are many different ways to be creative. We often tend to work with software that allows us to work with language. We work with things like blogs, wikis, and even podcast. But we also need to remember that creativity can come in many forms and these pieces of free software are paths into these areas.

Tags: scratch, phun, alice, mindstorms, lego, prgramming, classrooms