OREANDA-NEWS. May 20, 2016. Here's some great news for fans of Scratch, an extremely popular game that teaches kids the conceptual "language" around computer programming, using cartoon-y animated characters. The MIT Scratch Team said Tuesday that it will collaborate with Google to create the next generation of the game.

MIT says this collaboration will first result in a new generation of graphical programming blocks, called Scratch Blocks, which is an open source project that allows developers to create and share the "blocks" (or code) of each game with one another. Developers can also easily integrate the blocks into apps, games and toys they create for kids. Scratch Blocks makes it easier to create programming experiences for a wider range of people that will work on a wider range of devices.

The Scratch community? now has more than 11 million registered members, according to MIT, with 15,000 new members from around the world joining every day. First launched in 2007, Scratch is now in its third generation which has a focus on mobile devices.