Scratch - interactive game and story tool from MIT

Scratch is a programming language that allows users to create, share and remix interactive stories and games. It's aimed at educators and builds strong mathematical and scientific concepts.

Scratch is designed with learning and education in mind. As young people create and share projects in Scratch, they develop important design and problem-solving skills, learning how to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively.

Scratch can be used in many different settings: schools, museums, community centers, and homes. It is intended especially for 8- to 16-year-olds, but younger children can work on Scratch projects with their parents or older siblings, and college students use Scratch in some introductory computer science classes.

Scratch is developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab, with financial support from the National Science Foundation, Microsoft, Intel Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, Google, Iomega and MIT Media Lab research consortia.

And it's free to download for Mac , Windows and Ubuntiu Linux

Find out more here http://scratch.mit.edu/

And a specifc education focussed site here: http://scratched.media.mit.edu/

Getting kids used to the ideas of scripting and programming and aware of what drives the digital world is critical to there control of the modern world.