Eng:Lifelong Kindergarten Group

The Lifelong Kindergarten Group (LLK) is a group within the MIT Media Lab designed to "expand the range of what people can design, create, and learn". Some of the LLK's most well-known projects include Computer Clubhouses and Scratch.

Mission
"The Lifelong Kindergarten group is fortunate to be located within the MIT Media Lab, a hotbed of creative activity. In one corner of the Media Lab, students are designing new musical instruments. In another corner, students are designing new social-networking software. This type of activity makes the Media Lab not just a good research lab, but a good place for learning, since people learn a great deal when they are actively engaged in designing, creating, and inventing things.

Unfortunately, most children do not get the opportunity to engage in these types of creative activities. In school, they learn specific facts and skills, but rarely get the opportunity to design things -- or to learn about the process of designing things. Outside school, they interact with electronic toys and games, but they do not learn how to invent new ones.

In the Lifelong Kindergarten group, we're trying to change that. We believe that it is critically important for all children, from all backgrounds, to grow up knowing how to design, create, and express themselves. We are inspired by the ways children learn in kindergarten: when they create pictures with finger paint, they learn how colors mix together; when they create castles with wooden blocks, they learn about structures and stability. We want to extend this kindergarten style of learning, so that learners of all ages continue to learn through a process of designing, creating, experimenting, and exploring.

Our ultimate goal is a world full of playfully creative people who are constantly inventing new opportunities for themselves and their communities."

- The Lifelong Kindergarten Group

Current Members
The Lifelong Kindergarten Group has the following current members. Many of them are on the Scratch Team:
 * Abisola Okuk, Administrative Assistant
 * Alisha Panjwani, Research Assistant
 * Amon Millner, Visiting Scientist
 * Andrea Saxman
 * Andrew Sliwinski
 * Brian Harvey, Visiting Scientist
 * Carl Bowman, Staff
 * Carmelo Presicce
 * Chris Garrity, Staff
 * Christan
 * Christopher Willis-Ford, Staff
 * Claudia Urrea, Visiting Scientist
 * Colby Gutierrez-Kraybill
 * David Mellis, Research Assistant
 * Eric Rosenbaum, Research Assistant
 * Eric Schilling, Staff
 * Franchette Viloria
 * J. Philipp Schmidt, Visiting Scientist
 * Jennifer Jacobs, Research Assistant
 * John Maloney, Research Affiliate
 * Juanita Buitrago
 * Juliana Nazare, Research Assistant
 * Karen Brennan, Visiting Assistant Professor
 * Kasia Chmielinski, Staff
 * Katherine Mcconachie
 * Leo Burd, Research Scientist
 * Mark Goff
 * Matthew Taylor, Staff
 * Mitchel Resnick, Professor of Learning Research
 * Moran Tsur
 * Natalie Rusk, Research Scientist
 * Ray Schamp, Staff
 * Ricarose Roque, Research Assistant
 * Sarah Otts
 * Saskia Leggett
 * Sayamindu Dasgupta, Research Assistant
 * Shane Clements, Research Specialist
 * Srishti Sethi, Research Assistant
 * Susan Klimczak
 * Tiffany Tseng, Research Assistant
 * Timothy Mickel

Projects
The group has created a total of 105 programs, ideas, clubs, concepts etc. designed to help people learn, the full list can be found here. Their most notable projects are Scratch and Computer Clubhouse.

Scratch Related
The following projects are everything that has been created by the group that relates to Scratch. A lot of them are either under development or discontinued.
 * Scratch, the program itself
 * Scratch Day, a network of face-to-face local gatherings about Scratch
 * Scratch Worlds, a program not yet released that allows users to make it easier to create entire worlds in a programming language similar to Scratch
 * ScratchEd, an online community where Scratch educators can share stories, exchange resources, ask questions, and find people
 * ScratchR, the engine underlying the Scratch online community that allows people to publish and share programmable media
 * Design Blocks, a program similar to Scratch that is more suited to artists and designers
 * Jots, a program designed to let people reflect on their own learning process with Scratch
 * Facilitorials, tutorials about Scratch
 * Mobile Scratch, a language similar to Scratch, allowing users to create programs for use on mobile phones that is currently under development
 * Net Scratch, a concept being released along with Scratch 2.0 allowing users to connect more easily across the world
 * PicoBoard, allowing users to use sensors to control Scratch projects
 * Scratch for Arduino, a programming language similar to Scratch that allows users to program the Arduino
 * Scratch for Computer Science, changing Scratch so it is an introduction to computer science
 * Block Exchange, a website where Scratch users can share data sets and sources in the form of blocks.


 * App inventor, a tool to create Android apps with a Scratch-like interface
 * Watch Me Move; the official name for the Microsoft Kinect-like extension for Scratch, as shown in the Scratch 2.0 preview video.