Nurturing Creativity during Covid-19: Have You Tried ScratchJr?
My daughter, Gabi, began working with ScratchJr about two weeks ago; the intensity of my longing for the moment she realized the potential of this coding platform for young children is on par with my eagerness for her to enter the wizarding world of Harry Potter. Knowing her well, I’m confident both experiences will blow her mind and nurture her creative spirit. ScratchJr was created and is maintained via a collaboration between the DevTech Research Group at Tufts University, the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab, and the Playful Invention Company. Professor, Mitchel Resnick, heads up the MIT Media Lab where he developed the original version of this coding platform for older learners ( Scratch ). In his book, Lifelong Kindergarten , Resnick (2018) acknowledges America’s highly problematic obsession with standardization and standardized testing and he poses the question, “How can we encourage and support creativity in an era when standardized exams set the agenda for