Mitchel Resnick: Helping Kids Get Creative

Director of the Lifelong Kindergarten group at MIT's Media Lab, which brings free-form learning styles to students of all ages.

by Sara Bernard

Daring Dozen 2007
mitchel resnick
Credit: Brian Cairns

Director of the innovative research group Lifelong Kindergarten, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's famed Media Laboratory, Mitchel Resnick is on sabbatical this year in order to work on a book. Its tentative title, Lifelong Kindergarten: Preparing Today's Children for Life in Tomorrow's Creative Society, reveals its primary purpose: Describing how we can (and why we need to) help children develop as creative thinkers.

This weary world could use a little more kindergarten in it, and so it seems fitting that Resnick's group recently released a free public version of its Scratch software, a programming language that matches creative play with technology and learning. Now, it's easy for all "kids" to design their own computer games, animations, stories, music, and art, and share the wealth with one another on the Web.

Go to the Daring Dozen 2007 home page

This article was also published in Edutopia Magazine, June 2007


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