UPGRADE your CHILDREN with KANO: All you need in one box Make it as “simple and fun as Lego”; that was the request of the six-year-old who inspired the Kano project – a computer and coding kit for all ages which has now gone on sale for £99.99. It follows a highly successful Kickstarter campaign that began back in November 2013 and closed with over $1.5m in its coffers, including a …
I thought that the idea is that you _ALREADY_ _HAVE_ a long term project to use it for. One of those... Lifetime ones.
I am going to read the docs (I somehow missed their campaign) and if it sounds like somthing fit for purpose I am going to get a couple for the "projects" for Xmas (one 6 year old project and one 12 year old project).
the keyboard as a large case that the Pi was then fixed into, giving something resembling a BBC Micro, with the ports accessible round the back (remember when computers looked like computers?).
I'd promised my eldest one of these but the self-assembly element is gone, and he's already started learning Scratch at school, so I can't see the point, now. Shame. £100 seems a bit steep for a Pi+keyboard, too. Will they be offering the software seperately and, more importantly, is it any good?
Also kickstarter; with a t-shirt. It is self assembly, in the sense that my 6 year old snapped together all the parts; lego style.
When we opened the box, I had to tell her how to hold the mobo, and how to plug in all the bits (picture instructions in the book). It was all her though.
The OS that's shipped auto-boots into a desktop that is geared towards the young'uns, you get pong (http://pong.kano.me), snake, a minecraft learning game (this appeared to cause a reboot on our PI, suspect overheating), and a couple of other bits and bobs that we haven't got round to.
It's a bit overwhelming plugged into our living room TV, so I may have to plug it into one of the spare monitors (this is just a distance from screen/size of text thing).
I think it's (i) to provide an entry point; and, therefore, (ii) to broaden appeal. Nothing you learn in primary or secondary school is a particularly thorough treatment of the subject — you're supposed to discover your talent and carry it through to the rest of your life (via university, if appropriate).
You're obviously at the top end of talent; so the objective is to provide something that is suitable for a whole-class environment so that people like you who might otherwise not be introduced to programming at all can head off and discover the in-depth stuff.
Not every six-year-old can understand the concept of registers, instructions, and so on. Heck, some can't even add to three digits properly yet. So if there's some mollycoddling, it's because in nature you have to learn to stand before you can try to fly. Similarly, you have to be able to understand the idea of going from A to B to C before you're able to learn how to direct a computer to go from A to B to C.
Unless you're a Darwinist...
There are lots of really good Android tablets around the £120 mark.
They are a lot more powerful than the Pi, run lots of real games (e.g. Minecraft), are battery-powered for whiling away the time on long journeys, don't need a monitor, usually include a pretty good camera for stills and video calling - and with the right app I don't see why you can't use them to learn programming as well.
But did you have any exposure to computers before that?
Kids these days are accustomed to touch screens, full-graphics games, lots of swishy stuff.
I suspect there are very few who have the patience to hang around while you try to explain the subtleties of goto and line numbers. By the time you've remembered it for yourself, they'll already have wandered off to do something else.
Back in the day, 10 Print 'I am the greatest' 20; goto 10 was the height of cool, because it was pretty much the first time I actually got to touch a computer and get it to 'do' something.
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Actually, the main added value is that the Kano comes with instructions and a step-by-step guide to putting the hardware and the 'software' together.
So, for example, the first 'step' after setting up the OS is to play the classic snake game, but the instructions guide you through running it via the command line, progressively adding parameters to modify the game play.
At each step you get 'points' and 'badges', which can help to motivate the kids to continue.
I think they've pitched it about right. I bought a Pi a couple of years ago, but couldn't really figure out what to do with it (see the 'wandered off to do something else' above). With the Kano we were up and running in a short space of time. Early days yet, so I can't give a definitive conclusion.
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It doesn't ship at all to Ireland
Parcel Motel is your friend.
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