Mitch Resnick made a TED Talk entitled “Let’s teach kids to code.” He says that knowing how to code is an essential part of literacy. MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, created a programming language for kids called Scratch.

I swore I would keep my kids away from computers until they are older, so they could enjoy a “life” outside of programming. But they spend so much time in Minecraft, they might as well be learning to program instead.

To see the TED talk, and training, the MIT site is: scratch dot mit dot edu.

I gave my 8 year old son a book called “Learn to Program with Scratch.” He loves scratch even more than Minecraft. In just a few days, he was writing programs more complicated than some of the assignments we had in our first-year college courses. He is mastering loops and variables. MIT created a winner with Scratch – and it is available for everyone.

If your kids will be getting screen-time anyway this summer, consider helping them get ahead on the essential skill of programming.