Coding is fast becoming a skill that kids might want to learn early. Many future jobs may depend on coding and getting a jump on it early could give your kid a leg up. ROBOPAL founder and creator Jinshuang Zhao says he came up with the product to help kids age four and older learn programming concepts offline through a more traditional, fun, educational, gaming hands-on STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) experience. ROBOPAL combines magnetic coding blocks to create commands for the robot and transforms it to the child’s wishes.
“Nowadays, the main coding tutorial is either taken online or through educational organizations where that teaching is dry, boring or both,” Zhao said. “Robopal can inspire a child’s interest while teaching coding, offering children a simple way to play around with complex coding languages.”
“Tech skills are so in demand today that it’s very hard to recruit and retain these people, especially those who know object-oriented code, and that probably won’t change for the foreseeable future,” Zhao said. “By introducing their children to Robopal, parents are not only helping their kids learn the concepts of computer programming at an early age, but they also may be better preparing them for lucrative programming careers as adults.”
The company says the device can be used by a variety of people and organizations, including:
- Parents and grandparents, who want to interact with their children and grandchildren while both learn about coding by playing with their own Do-It-Yourself robot
- Teachers, who can use ROBOPAL as a tool to teach coding in a fun way
- Kids, who can play and explore programming with ROBOPAL by themselves
- Adults interested in robotics who want to learn basic coding
ROBOPAL is currently crowdfunding on Kickstarter (starting at $129USD) and you can hit the link below to support the campaign.
What do you think of this project? Is this something you can see you and your kids using? Let us know in the comments below or on Google+, Twitter, or Facebook.
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