Programming by Choice: Urban Youth Learning Programming With Scratch

This paper describes Scratch, a visual, block-based programming language designed to facilitate media manipulation for novice programmers. The authors report on the Scratch programming experiences of urban youth ages 8-18 at a Computer Clubhouse - an after school center - over an 18-month period. The analyses of 536 Scratch projects collected during this time documents the learning of key programming concepts even in the absence of instructional interventions or experienced mentors. They discuss the motivations of urban youth who choose to program in Scratch rather than using one of the many other software packages available to them and the implications for introducing programming at after school settings in underserved communities.