ABSTRACT
ScratchJr is a free app developed by Bers’ DevTech research group at Tufts University, in collaboration with Mitch Resnick’s Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab. It is widely used by millions of children around the world. With ScratchJr, children can code personally meaningful and interactive collages, stories, games, and other animations. This chapter begins with an illustrative vignette about how children can use ScratchJr, and then describes the history of how researchers developed and launched the app. Following this, the chapter offers an in-depth description of the various features in the ScratchJr programming language, with an emphasis on the design elements that make it a technological “playground,” a technological tool that supports children’s engagement with behaviors from the Positive Technological Development framework.
