If you’ve been on the internet in 2014 you might’ve read a lot about kids learning to program. Hour of code for example was an initiative that even Obama supported and participated in. We’re all aware that computers have taken over our world and they all need software that needs to be programmed, to do so we need people, skilled people and a lot of them. Right now there aren’t enough, and the only way to fix it is by teaching kids on a young age how to do it. In my opinion programming should be part of the basic curriculum, like maths and literature. There are perfect (online) learning methods for that. Which are simple and fun but do work. (Codeschool, Treehouse, etc..). But now even our youngest, as young as 5 years old, can learn the basic principles behind programming, in an awesome and fun way!
At first sight
First time playing around with Dash
At first sight they’re just very cute toys, with shiny lights, fun sounds and you can drive them around the room with the basic app GO. This is for the first amazement and already has a big wow factor. You can let Dash dance and Dot flicker his lights and even let them both sound like an elefantie. The video on the left shows me doing that for the first time (filmed in first person with the smartphone mount). But that’s only the beginning, i mean we’ve all played around with a remote controlled car, this is not that much more you’d think. But that’s where you are wrong because these robots are programmable. There are different apps that let you do that, first of all there’s Path.
Paths
Path, as you might’ve guessed, let’s you draw paths that Dash can walk. (screenshot) You could make an obstacle course and let Dash drive around it carefully with your drawn path. This is not really programming yet of course, but it provides more control than the Go app. It let’s you repeat a certain path over and over again, which is a segway into programming of course. Xylophones
Real programming
Finally there’s the creme de la creme, Blockly. An app that let’s you build sequences with if, then, else, while statements. This is done very simplistic with blocks that you can drag, and there are only two sequences per program that you can make. But it’s a real intro into programming and teaches you about te basic principles and algorithms.
Pathfinding
While digging through the demo projects I found a very interesting one that showed a principle I only learned in college, pathfinding. In my second year of college I had to design a program for the Mars Rover® to roam the surface of Mars, using the pathfinding principle. “Drive until obstacle, turn 90º left and continue driving until you reach an obstacle”. This program is featured as a demo project in the Blockly app and works the same way. Although this is simplified, keep in mind i had to learn this when i was 20 and these robots are for kids 5–12.
Defacto
As you might know i currently work at Defacto, a company that’s always on the cutting edge of technology. (They were the first in Groningen to livestream football matches, where only 17 people watched). That’s why we had the freedom 2 years ago to just order these, after only seeing a promo video. We were immediately hyped! So we ordered and waited, and actually forgot about them a little bit until last christmas, or right before christmas when our boss had a surprise. The robots finally came. Then we let the kids of employees play with them:
After that the question was, what are we going to do with them now… and that’s when I came up with the idea to go to schools and let kids there do assignments with them. I took some assignments from www.makewonder.com, thought of some myself and tested them out. Now we’re gonna go to schools with two sets of robots, 2 people and let 10 kids learn the basics of programming in 4 sessions of 2 hours. Interested? Let me know!
Important
I think it’s very important that kids, especially my future kids know basic programming principles, even though they might not end up doing it for a living. It teaches you very important logic skills which are applicable in many areas. Programming and our kids are the future.