Credit: Brian Cairns
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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.