This Board Game Aims To Teach Preschoolers How To Code
In our "Weekly Innovation" blog series, we explore an interesting idea, design or product that you may not have heard of yet. Do you have an innovation to share? Use this quick form.
These days, the effort to get more of us writing computer programs has become part of an "everybody should learn to code" ethos that folks like President Obama and Will.I.Am have gotten behind.
"We all depend on technology — to communicate, to bank, [for] information — and none of us know how to read and write code," Will.I.Am points out in an online ad for Code.org, a nonprofit aimed at making coding more mainstream. Obama said in February that he wants young people to "know how to produce stuff using computers and not just consume stuff."
There is no shortage of books and online programs teaching you how to code once you can use a computer. But how would you learn to code if you can't even read? How could three-year-olds begin to learn the basics of computer programming?
That was the question swirling around the head of startup entrepreneur Dan Shapiro while playing with his twin kids one afternoon. [Disclosure: We didn't know it when we started reporting this story, but Dan is the brother of NPR White House Correspondent Ari Shapiro.] Dan Shapiro tried to come up with a way to play a game with his children without getting bored himself. Then he came up with his own: Robot Turtles, a tabletop board game that teaches youngsters the fundamentals of programming, without words.
All Tech Considered
Hacking Real Things Becomes Child's Play At This Camp