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Our kids technology product reviews are intended to help you work out whether a toy, gadget or kit is a good fit for your child or family. There's lots of cool stuff available, but is it the right choice for the child or teenager that you are buying for? We'll help you make the right choices and get the best value for money.

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Parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and friends assemble. We create gift lists to help you make good choices for kids technology which helps them develop the right skills for the future. We research the best in Coding Toys and Games, Making / Craft Tools and Kits, STEM/STEAM related gifts, Programmable Robots, Electronics Kits and Gadgets for Tech Age Kids and Teens.

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Get crafty with technology. Here we'll post all our ideas and projects using technology to get creative and making with kids. You'll find anything from making a lemon battery to a glow-in-the-dark Minecraft sword. Our projects are tried and tested on our own kids or at events we run, so we are sure you can have a go at home with your kids. Some of our projects use specific tech gadgets which we provide links for you to purchase.

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STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. In recent years there is an increased focus in these areas of study. We like to include Art and Design too, so we often talk about STEAM (A stands for Art). At Tech Age Kids we believe Coding is a new literacy and children need to understand how technology works, practice making skills and grow in their curiosity to make a better future for us all.

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Coding is increasingly being recognised as an important skill for children to learn. Some will learn to code at school or at a coding club, but it's brilliant if they get support at home too.

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We think it's really important for kids to get hands-on with electronics and learn how to make circuits and write code to control hardware. Younger kids can start with conductive playdough. For kids who like to combine craft and tech, littleBits are fab. And we love SAM Labs wireless electronics components for making it easy for kids to make Internet of Things inventions. Lots of electronics kits for kids have support for the Arduino microprocessor environment. The DuinoKit Jr is one of our favourites. Arduino is a fab skill for older kids and teens to develop.

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We love robots at Tech Age Kids, especially programmable ones. We've got lots of them and write reviews and projects that use them. Our programmable robots for kids buying guide is a good place to start if you're not sure what's available. Roby the mBot Meccano robot dog is one of our popular projects and has been with us to lots of events. Our Ozobot LEGO trailer is fab for kids who love LEGO and robots.

MAKING AND CRAFT$show=/search/label/making

We're advocates of the creative use of technology, but this needs to be balanced with developing physical skills such as papercraft, woodwork, clay modelling, technical drawing and soldering. If children don't develop these skills as they grow up then physical making projects can become frustrating rather than fun. The Maker Community uses the term 'making' as a broad term to include all sorts of artisan skills or craft activities. Being able to make things can lead to life-long hobbies or even careers. It's a great feeling to be able to take a project from an idea in your head to a real object that does something. We're particularly interested to explore products that combine maker skills with tech skills such as electronics but others focus purely on the physical making skills that are still important to modern making.

Herman Hollerith and Punch Cards

Hollerith
Hollerith is a name that you'll come across if you study computer science. Several concepts have been named after Herman Hollerith who invented an automated punch card tabulating machine.

Herman Hollerith was one of the founders of a company that later became IBM. Hollerith's invention lead to the punched cards which were a big part of the day to day work of early professional computer programmers.

Herman Hollerith was born on February 29th 1860 in Buffalo, New York. Yes, he had a leap day birthday, so we thought we'd better cover him today or we would have to wait another 4 years!

We think it's important that kids understand the history of computing. Most western kids today grow up with internet at home and access to mobile technology. We've previously written about key tech innovators such as Ada Lovelace, George Boole, Grace Hopper and Thomas Edison.

Hollerith originally invented his punch card machine for accurate data handling for the US census. (There had been punched cards before in use in weaving looms and musical instruments.)

IBM progressed the use of punch card based machines and early general purpose computers were programmed with punch cards.

Thanks to Hollerith, early computer programmers were able to capture their programs on physical punched cards that could be fed into a computer. This meant that programs could be prepared in advance and modified by adding, removing or physically editting cards.

FortranCardPROJ039.agr
Punch Card

Early computer programmers didn't have the benefit of being able to run their code immediately. They would have to write the whole thing and then submit it when they got a slot on a computer.  It was very annoying if it had a bug.

Throughout my career I met lots of people who had used punched cards in their job. The legacy of punched cards was very strong in the layout of the FORTRAN programming language that I used in one of my early jobs.

If you want to see a punch card preparation machine then watch Bubble Whiting's fantastic demonstration and explanation of how she used one in her job:


In this video Professor Brailsford explains how punch cards, or Hollerith cards, work and shares his experience of using them:


In these days of fantastic browser based coding sites for kids, Hollerith cards look really hard work! But they were a significant step towards coding becoming accessible. 


24 days of Scratch coding book cover and cute penguin
Name

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Tech Age Kids | Technology for Children: Herman Hollerith and Punch Cards
Herman Hollerith and Punch Cards
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Tech Age Kids | Technology for Children
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