I have to say I know very little about computing and coding. This does worry me slightly, knowing that my children will be learning it soon and I have no idea to help them. When Kano asked if I would like to review one of their computer kits I was as keen for me to have a look into it as much as big man. The computer comes in parts that you simply slot together using the guide.
As you can see the user guide is extremely easy to understand and big man was able to assemble the computer himself.
You will need a screen to use with this kit. I had an old TV in mind for big man's project. However, as it is so old, it didn't have the correct cable fitting so we used the TV in our bedroom instead. Here is the actual computer that big man put together!
There are a number of simple programs to use. We started with programming it to talk to us. This was pretty easy and within a few minutes the computer was saying "Mummy is great." We also learnt how to make it talk in a French accent which created lots of giggles from big man.
The next thing we looked at was the snake game. Here it goes through how you can change the parameters of the game by changing the size of the game and speed of the snake. It then told us to type in the instructions to give the player 3 lives. Big man said what if I want 4 lives? We talked about this and he typed in the instructions for it to do this. Unfortunately, it wouldn't do it as it was set for us to follow the instructions it was setting. I felt this was a shame as he was understanding how to do it, but the program only allowed us to do what it wanted.
As well as retro styles games such as Pong and Make Snake there are current ones such as Minecraft, we just haven't got round to looking at these yet. We still have a lot more to learn with Kano but I thought I would share my initial impressions with you. Big man is 7 and still needs help with the programming side but I would say that in a couple of years it would be the kind of thing he could explore entirely on his own. Kano can be purchased from at a price of £119.99.
We were given the kit for the purpose of the review but the opinions are own.
I would love one of these being pretty bad with computers and coding but I think this would be a great help with that for both me and my daughter #TriedTested
ReplyDeleteIt is good - just need more time to get my head round it!
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