Scr0300: scratch 2.0 overview  (Page 2/7)

Scratch is available free of charge. Because Scratch 2.0 runs in a browser, it is compatible with all computers that support a compatible browser and the Adobe Flash Player .

Some statistics

As of March 15, 2013, the Scratch home page indicated that 3,171,004 projects had been created and published on the Scratch website since inception. That numberwas increasing by about 230 projects per hour or 4 projects per minute at that time.

According to an article published by MIT personnel

"On the morning of May 14, 2007, the (Scratch Online Community) website was officially launched. Several news outlets and social newswebsites featured the Scratch website on their front pages. In a matter of hours the server and the website could not handle the traffic andthe website went down several times."

If I did the arithmetic correctly, this represents an average of one new project every minute being posted on the website since the inception of thewebsite in 2007. Of course, many other projects have been created but not published on the website.

Many archived projects are readily available

Unlike with v1.4, it is no longer necessary with v2.0 to download a project to examine the source code. Thousands of archived projects are available for online execution and examination at the source code levelonline.

When you view a project online, a blue button in the upper-right corner of your screen labeled See inside will show you the source code for the project.

Thus, the amount of resource material available to budding Scratch programmers is almost limitless.

Post, review, and comment

MIT makes it possible for every scratcher (as the members of the Scratch community refer to themselves) to share his or her projects for online execution and examination by other scratchers. (Project files can also be downloaded, but that capability is intended mainly for advanced users.) MIT also makes it possible for other scratchers to review and critique the projects shared by others. Registration is free and open to everyone.

MIT seems to make a significant effort to hide the true identities of the registrants and also seems to make a significant effort to ensure that theposted material is age appropriate for middle school students. (See Community Guidelines .)

An organized system for peer review and critique is provided. The system is too elaborate for me to describe. If you want toknow more about it, simply register (become a scratcher) and take a look at it for yourself.

A world-wide phenomenon

This is not just a United States phenomenon. The scratchers are located in many different countries around the world. A forum is providedfor scratchers to exchange information with one another. As of this writing, that forum is available in at least fifteen different languages.

Also, many scratchers whose first language is not English participate in the English version of the forums and provide English-language descriptions of theirprojects when they publish them.

Demographics

An article published around 2008 stated that based on the first five months of usage data,