December has just begun, but plans for Scratch Day 2012 are well underway. Scratch Day (May 19, 2012) is a group of community based events where parents, teachers, and/or kids come together to promote and learn about the Scratch programming language.

Here’s some stats to illustrate Scratch Day’s reach from the Scratch Day website.

• In 2011, there were 126 events in 36 different countries.
• In 2010, there were 120 events in 40 different countries.
• In 2009, there were 120 events in 44 different countries.

For the last two years, I’ve attended the OLPC Learning Club DC Scratch Day event in Arlington, VA to help facilitate a workshop with the students. I never stop being amazed at how quickly kids adapt to Scratch and how quickly they become skilled Scratchers. Jeff Elkner, Mike Lee and the OLPC Learning Club are great hosts; they even surprised me last year with a XO laptop. If you’re in the northern Virginia area, you’ll enjoy this event.

This year it looks like Scratch Day is coming back to Pennsylvania. Scratch Day Philadelphia is being organized by Quinn Burke. I attended Scratch Day Pennsylvania in 2009 at the Abington Friends School where I met another group of great people, including Quinn.

Scratch Day Resources

The Scratch team publishes a list of Scratch Day resources. Of course, my book Scratch 1.4 Beginner’s Guide offers many scratch programming ideas and solutions to help you develop workshops.

It’s not too early to plan your Scratch Day. It’s a lot of fun. Where will you be?

I never like to describe Scratch as a computer programming language, but it’s the easiest descriptor there is. The problem, of course, is that computer programming, turns adults and kids away equally as fast.

In this NY Times article, “Programming for Children, Minus Cryptic Syntax,” Mitch Resnick offers this perspective:

“We shouldn’t think of programming narrowly as a tool for a professional activity but as a means of expression,” he said.

“Our goal is not just for kids to grow up and get jobs as programmers. We feel that everyone should be able to express themselves with online media.”

And expression takes many creative forms, including stories, games, and multimedia. That’s the obvious stuff. But learning to express yourself with a computer programming language reinforces the skills needed to survive day-to-day, even for those art-driven and wordy-type people: logic, thoughtful analysis, and the thrill of building something cool.

I know that there are a fair number of people who are not interested in thoughtful analysis. Their work shows it.

Scratch brings together something that we often encounter in the business world. We start with a goal (an expression) that we must achieve in a given set of rules. And the rules can be anything from market conditions to industry or company policies to tools, such as Scratch.

So, when we tell our class, our workshop, or our kids to “tell me the story of your vacation to the beach using Scratch,” we’re providing a fun environment to develop problem solving skills. Oh, and they can work on their language skills, too.

In 2010, Google announced its App Inventor development environment, a graphical environment for building Android apps. The project has its roots in Scratch.

According to a press release, Google open sourced App Inventor and donated the project to MIT Media Lab. I guess you could say the project came home. The App Inventor announcement was in the context of the new MIT Center for Mobile Learning, which will be “dedicated to transforming education and learning through innovation in mobile computing.” Time will tell what that means, exactly.

I’m wondering what the future holds for App Inventor. Will it be typecast as an educational too? Will it serve a broader user/business application? Will programmers adopt it as a viable programming language?

I dig Scratch and think App Inventor could be a wonderful companion, especially if App Inventor can have some practical application. In other words, it seems it would provide a logical progression from the strictly educational/fun application of Scratch.

I’m watching closely for the next news. Maybe it’s time to start thinking about my next book.