Despite the recent shennanigans surround the BBC Jam project, the corporation continues to be a key player in interactive web developments – even if it just as a conduit for providing information. Yesterday (15th May) the BBC website posted a story about SCRATCH a free set of tools which allows anyone to “create their own animated stories, video games and interactive artworks” without having to create any code. Developed by the MIT Media Lab, the site is primarily aimed at children, but that’s no reason for grown ups not to use it; particularly in an educational setting. One of the downsides of being featured on the BBC site is that the SCRATCH website has been inundated with traffic and so isn’t working to capacity (I still haven’t been able to access it). However, the blogsphere is full of the story and there are a number of videos on YouTube about it. Looking at these it certainly does look like a fairly intutive system. Tony Hirst has an interesting article on it too on his blog .