A large number of games and applications teach children to program, but educators and toy manufacturers understand that programming is not everything in computer science.
Gene Luen Yang, Teacher of Computer Science tells Edsurge reporter. "The computer is so smart and friendly, not just a child, the adult also wants the computer to walk into our lives. But if you want to enter this professional area, how is innovation happened? You need to understand how the computer works."
Although the electronic equipment is everywhere, this does not mean that the children understand how these devices work? Only the children understand the functionality of these electronic devices to see the nature of the problem. Computer hardware toys, I hope to help children understand the function of electronic devices.
The developer of computer hardware toys believe that by playing these toys, you can stimulate your child's love to technology, and then provoked interest in computer academics. Kano is a computer kit that can be assembled. Their company's vision is: children's own assembled computers, understand the computer's working principle, write code. Light of life with computers and art.
The market situation of this type of toy is as follows: Arduino development board, 300,000 sets of official sales channels, more than 700,000 sets of imitation products in the market. Raspberry Pi, size like a credit card. To date, sales have reached 3 million sets. And the price is also cheaper, and the HE PI Zero, which has just been acquired, only $ 5. Even some are free, the British government issues programmable equipment such as the British seventh grade students to encourage students to participate in programming courses.
Why learning hardware?
Kano's founder and CEO Alex Klein pointed out that hardware is easier to learn basic computer knowledge than programming. When using KANO programming, children need to remove processors, keyboards, memory strips, and speakers from the box and equipped with the displays provided by the parent to learn programming. Alex Klein believes that if you don't understand the function of your computer, you can learn programming, it is destined to fail.
Klein talks, if you don't understand the basic principles, it is like building a house on the beach. Move your hand, assemble, you will witness the magic, you will also go to the mysterious.
BLINKBLINK's founder Nicole Messier, like Klein, I think computer hardware toys provide opportunities to learn programming, eliminating the fear of hardware. BlinkBlink is a set of tools to use some specific activities, such as making circuits, exciting young girls to understand the logical thinking of computer programs.
Messier pointed out: "This set can cultivate the following coding capabilities: scheduling, solving problems, critical thinking skills, just through the same way, this way can make children push the embedded circuit while playing, can It is recommended that scientific thinking is more acceptable than direct programming.
Makey Makey's Jay Silver believes that hardware toys are more than just ways to program. He believes that the real goal of hardware toys is to stimulate your child's confidence in creation. Anyone can create value-valuable items, that is a small item. Makey Makey turns daily supplies into mouse and keyboards through boards and connectors. Jay Silver pointed out: "Many people think that innovation is a cool and cool genius. In fact, innovation is simple, just like you can decorate your bedroom, you can reorganize your keyboard, the same, you can decorate this world "
Like children, hardware toys have highly played their imagination talents. LittleBits is a company that sells electronic components, product designers David Sharp talked about his idea: "We are an electronic component generation, when we start understanding how the world is working, we can improve and fix the world."
Gathered a game
Creative sports have brought a huge impact on hardware toys. Undoubtedly, Maker Faire, the world's largest Church DIY party, promoting the maker culture, showing creative, innovative and created stage, is also interested in providing children with an opportunity to show a display.
Kano has developed a social network platform similar to GitHub, which is intended to create a Gelong DIY platform for children.
Like the invasive transportation, the Hardware toy manufacturers are also seeking hardware opportunities, but learning electronic components is still difficult and expensive. Kano began to meet this challenge, Kano said: computer assembly can be simple as playing high, no teacher.
When everyone advocates more computer science education, Klein pointed out that the world's existing 8.2 billion interconnected equipment, but only 50 million encoders. Through comparison, it can be seen that the number of demand for the encoders needs to be increased. If we don't narrow down this gap, our next generation will only develop some Huadi-made applications without re-concepting the basic framework of the computer.
Can everyone participate?
Toy is a gender distinction. Computer hardware toys are no exception, Nicole Messier pointed out: Many toy suits show boy, girls can play, in fact, in reality, there are many sports toys are designed for bodes. If life is wonderful in a world without gender differences. But most smart toys are designed for boys, just not to say. Therefore, if there is a toy designed for girls, it will cause people's dislike. How to make the hardware toy design, while the boy is also suitable for girls, it is the task of design experts.
At the same time, other manufacturers and designers should also take into account the needs of national differences and physical disabilities.
What is the real situation?
Hardware toys are not just loved by enthusiasts and creators. In particular, the school is keen to apply hardware toys to STEM teaching. Many open source devices provide an interface for the teacher's convenient modification. A Georgia's school, redesigned five-year courses, incorporating the Kano-based activities in the course. After a thousand girls participated in the seminar after class, BLINKBLINK was spawned. Makey Makey, this year has sold 25,000 products to the school, although the company has never focused on the marketing department. Silver said: "I am very surprised, Makey Makey not only gave a favorite of adults, but unexpectedly received the favor of schools."
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