Scratch is a free animation program released by MIT for children of all ages. A tutorial is embedded above, Scratch is intended, I think, to whet the appetite of kids for animation, editing and scripting. It’s animation options use a visual metaphor of building blocks snapping together and it’s fun to play with. It’s available for Windows, Mac OS X, and soon for Linux.

MIT labs have also released HacketyHack, a program to help kids (or newbies) code in Ruby. The tutorial has a nice look and seems very kid friendly, and as someone interested in learning a bit about Ruby I have a use for this. But it doesn’t work. The editor brings up all kinds of errors and the thing crashed on me. It is still in Beta, but I think they should emphasize the experimental nature of the program on the website so as not to frustrate newcomers (particularly children) with an unrefined program. Check back in a few months for version 1.0 and (hopefully) a version for Linux.