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Welcome to Part Four in this four part Series exploring Scratch, a  free program from MIT that is engaging students across the nation. This time I have struck the mother lode with twenty sites that are bound to bring relief to those itching to learn Scratch.

"A new study co-authored by MIT researchers documents the existence of collective intelligence among groups of people who cooperate well, showing that such intelligence extends beyond the cognitive abilities of the groups' individual members, and that the tendency to cooperate effectively is linked to the number of women in a group."

Some interesting implications here for teams at schools including their composition and providing training to develop social skills.

Explore some views of future education - PDF edition available thanks to MIT Press

Integrating twenty-three different case studies-which include Harry Potter podcasting, video-game playing, music-sharing, and online romantic breakups-in a unique collaborative authorship style, Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out is distinctive for its combination of in-depth description of specific group dynamics with conceptual analysis. This book was written as a collaborative effort by members of the Digital Youth Project, a three-year research effort funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and conducted at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Southern California.

Scratch, a free iconic programming language and active learning community provided by MIT, is a learning platform EVERYONE involved in education should know how to use. This is a bold claim, but I'm ready to defend it more than ever after spending four weeks working with Scratch this past semester with my UNT pre-service education students.

Recently posted on Vimeo a fascinating series of short videos on the future of storytelling. The videos juxtapose the perspectives of some key thinkers in this space, including Clay Shirkey (NYU), Joshua Green (UCSB), Ian Condry and Nick Montfort (MIT), Dean Jansen from the Participatory Culture Foundation, Joe Lambert from the Center for Digital Storytelling, and, hmm, Henry Jenkins (USC), among others. Each video is between five and ten minutes long and tackles some of the ways that shifts in the media environment are changing the nature of stories and storytelling.

"In four small schools scattered across San Francisco, a data experiment is under way. That is where AltSchool is testing how technology can help teachers maximize their students' learning. Founded two years ago by Max ­Ventilla, a data expert and former head of personalization at Google, AltSchool runs schools filled with data-gathering technology. Information is captured from the moment each student arrives at school and checks in on an attendance app"

Discussing how universities want to control knowledge rather than letting it flow freely.

Timeline is a DHTML-based AJAXy widget for visualizing time-based events. It is like Google Maps for time-based information.

Exhibit is a lightweight structured data publishing framework that lets you create web pages with support for sorting, filtering, and rich visualizations by writing only HTML and optionally some CSS and Javascript code.

Scratch Day is a worldwide network of gatherings, where people will come together to meet other Scratchers, share projects and experiences, and learn more about Scratch. Scratch is designed for middle school students to learn computer programming and enjoy creativity.