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Scratch is a free visual programming environment, that lets you create your own softwares, presentations, games and other applets that run in a web browser (Java).

Scratch is a new programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art — and share your creations on the web. Scratch is designed to help young people (ages 8 and up) develop 21st century learning skills. As they create Scratch projects, young people learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also gaining a deeper understanding of the process of design.

Scratch takes advantage of advances in computing power and interface design to make programming more engaging and accessible for children, teens, and others who are learning to program.

Features:

• Building-block programming - Create programs in Scratch, you simply snap graphical blocks together into stacks.
• Media manipulation -Create programs that control and mix graphics, animations, music, and sound
• Sharing and collaboration - Upload your project to the Scratch website

With Scratch, you can easily combine graphics, photos, music, and sound to create and share animations through drag and drop programming. Scratch does not require you to learn any scripting language. Once you’ve created a Scratch project, you can share it on the Scratch website, or embed on your MySpace or Facebook.

Scratch is currently available free of charge for Mac OSX and Windows, Linux version is coming soon, you can download it from http://scratch.mit.edu/download. Follow the simple step-by-step guide and video tutorial to learn how to use Scratch at the Support page.