I'm part of a project called Code Montana whose goal is to teach 1000 Montanan high schoolers how to program using CodeHS primarily. The project launched in September and we already have over 400 kids signed up.
Teachers have started using it to teach students about programming and game development.
It is similar to Scratch, but it is more powerful (and easier to actually make a game). The behaviour system has thing slike timers, if statements, math functions, variables.
So far from what we have been told by our users it is a great intro to programming concepts.
Keep in mind we never developed it for teaching programming! it was made as a fun and easy way to make and share video games!
https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11729?utm_source=SparkFun+...
http://fuse.microsoft.com/projects/kodu
I haven't had time to play with it, but I loaded it onto a computer for her and she occasionally plays with it still.
Check out http://www.processing.org
