"Sewing the seeds for a more creative society" - Crickets and Scratch apps inspiring girls

The two technologies, called Crickets and Scratch, are designed to support ...the “creative thinking spiral.” In this process, people imagine what they want to do, create a project based on their ideas, play with their creations, share their ideas and creations with others, and reflect on their experiences—all of which leads them to imagine new ideas and new projects. As students go through this process, over and over, they learn to develop their own ideas, try them out, test the boundaries, experiment with alternatives, get input from others, and generate new ideas based on their experiences.

A 15-year-old girl from the UK with the screen name BeeBop created a project full of animated sprites, and encouraged others to use them in their projects. Another 10-year-old girl, using the name MusicalMoon, liked BeeBop’s animations and asked if she’d be willing to create “a mountain background from a bird’s-eye view” for use in one of her projects. MusicalMoon then asked BeeBop if she wanted to join Mesh Inc., a “miniature company” that MusicalMoon had created to produce “top quality games” in Scratch. A few days later, a 14-yearold boy from New Jersey who went by the moniker Hobbit discovered the Mesh Inc. gallery and offered his services: “I’m a fairly good programmer, and I could help with de-bugging and stuff.” Later, an 11-year-old boy from Ireland calling himself Marty was added to the Mesh staff because of his expertise in “scrolling backgrounds.” (resnick, M. 2007).

http://wiki.classroom20.com/file/view/Learning-Leading-final.pdf/35153873/Learning-Leading-final.pdf