Aniboom & Scratch

IF YOU CAN’T BEAT THEM…

There’s no avoiding it. Chances are, if you have a kid older than 5, they’re going to want to be on the computer. And they’re going to want to play games. Often, rather violent games. Boys, especially.

I tried keeping guns out of the house for years, but every time I’d turn around, my child would be turning a garden hose or a stick into a gun or a sword or a lightsaber.

“Are you playing ‘bao-bao’ (guns) with that upside-down hobbyhorse,” I’d ask my sweet little 4 year-old.
“Oh nooooo, Mommy,” came the innocent reply. “I was playing fireman. See? Water. Pshhhhhh!”

It was a battle, and I was losing, and I didn’t even believe in fighting in the first place!

By the time he was seven, I gave up. He was allowed to play video games online for 30 minutes/day. But then that became a different battle—practically a legal one.

“If I play 45 minutes today and tomorrow, then on Saturday when we’re going camping, I won’t be playing at all, so I can add the half hour to Tuesday and Wednesday and it’ll be fine.”

My son was trading in video game futures!  And I didn’t want to make the market.

Eventually I discovered a site called Aniboom. On it is a programming environment called Shapeshifter that lets kids build their own animations frame by frame using basic shapes and palettes they can modify. They can loop the animations to create videos, post them for public viewing, see how many hits they get, etc. There’s another programming language out there created by MIT.  It’s called Scratch, and it allows similar animation building.  My son enjoys playing with both.  Playing includes trying out other people’s games and animations, as well as making his own.  You have to read books before you write them.  Games, of course, work the same way.  He gets to play, but hopefully, it’s building his gaming imagination for when he makes his own.  His favorite for a while was an archery game on Scratch:

I figured there was no way I was winning this battle, so why not change the terms? As long as he’s making something rather than destroying something, it’s a good thing, I think.  And, as long as playing games is part of a process that includes making games, well, ditto.

It’s great to have a guinea pig at home to experiment and learn with. As a teacher I bring what I learn with and from my son right back into the classroom. I know my students’ parents don’t have access to all these technological resources, so I feel it’s incumbent upon me to make sure my students have the same 21st century opportunities my own child has.That’s what public education means to me: equality of opportunity and access to create productive, achieving, participating citizens.

A version of this post first appeared on Tech Savvy Mama, part of the D.C. Metro Moms Blog.

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