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Here's where you'll find all the latest news about technology for children. We love to follow cool new inventions on Kickstarter and we hunt out all the latest announcements about tech toys and gadgets for the coming Christmas holidays. You'll also get our take on children's technology stories in the media.

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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.

GIFT GUIDES$show=/search/label/gift%20guide

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.

PROJECTS$show=/search/label/project

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.

ELECTRONICS$show=/search/label/electronics

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.

ROBOTICS$show=/search/label/robotics

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.

Ozobot Maze with Code Stickers and Building Blocks


Ozobot are tiny line following robots that can be coded to perform certain tasks using colour codes. You can also programme Ozobots using the Blockly platform allowing you to code more complex instructions.

We really like Ozobots as they offer both online and offline play. Some time ago we made a maze for Ozobot using LEGO Duplo and Ozoeasy Overwrite Codes. We've worked on our design process and share our experience below.


We've made our LEGO Maze for Ozobot twice, having learnt lots from the first experience, we were able to make design adjustments on the second attempt. It's important for kids to learn their first attempt, may not work. It's quite the skill and my kids are definitely still learning how to cope with failure.


Building the Maze

The kids really enjoyed building the Maze using LEGO Duplo, but you could use any type of building blocks, including MegaBlocks or even Wooden Blocks. Our first maze just navigated Ozobot from one end to the other. We noticed Ozobot was about the size of a 2 x 2 Duplo block.

They built the maze one block wide, thinking if Ozobot was slightly smaller, it should move easily. It did work on the straights, but Ozobot didn't have enough room to turn. They had to rethink their design.



On the second attempt, we made the track 2 x 4 Duplo block wide. This gave the Ozobots plenty of room to turn and also do other tricks like zigzag and tornado.


Drawing the Lines

As Ozobot is a line following robot, it needs a good solid black line to follow. We found a chisel edged black sharpie pen works the best.

Our first maze, with its narrow path made drawing a good solid line really tricky. We came up with an idea to trace the line in pencil, shift the Duplo maze off the paper and then draw the line. This worked fairly well, except we had to rebuild some parts of the maze - they didn't quite make the move.



Our second maze, with its wider paths worked much better and this time we didn't move the Duplo structure.

Adding the Codes


When you use Ozobots offline on paper, they can follow instructions using colour coded codes. The main colours are red, green, blue and black - and set in a particular order will give Ozobot commands, like turn left or turn around. Once you've drawn your solid black line, it's tricky to add your Ozocodes, unless you have predetermined their position and left a gap in the path line.

We've come up with several ideas to solve the problem.

  • One, use blue, green and red stickers cut into tiny squares and build up your codes over the path line. 
  • Two, use a white sticker and colour in your codes however you need to be careful to use the right shade of blue and green. 
  • Three, we discovered OzoEasy stickers!


Ozoeasy Stickers are little round stickers with printed Ozocodes which are easy to use and the colours of the codes work first time.

Eight year old inventor of Ozoeasy overwrite codes, sent us a pack to try out. Firstly we love the fact kids are solving problems, and coming up with brilliant products to help others too. I used the Ozoeasy overwrite code stickers with my 5 and 7 year old kids. They loved using them, as they were easy to peel off and stick in position.

The Ozoeasy sticker made the coding part of our activity much more engaging. This time we didn't have to worry whether we'd left a gap in the line for our codes, we just decided which codes we wanted to use and stuck them over the line.

We'd love it if the sticker were reusable, as sometimes we stuck it in the wrong direction or the wrong place. However we managed by carefully peeling it off and re-sticking with a bit of glue.

**Ozoeasy Giveaway**




The Ozoeasy starter pack comes with a sheet of direction codes, another with timer and moves codes and a black sheet for you to colour your own codes. This is really useful if you are making up new codes for your Ozobots using the Blockly app.



Playing the Game


The maze was part of a game the kids designed to get the aliens to a space rocket. We made alien costumes for the Ozobots and a space rocket which was placed at the end of the maze.

The kids used a timer to see who's Alien Ozobot reached the rocket first.

Ozobot randomly selects its path when it reaches a crossroad. In some cases we added Ozoeasy codes to send it in a specific direction. However the random choice, made the game really fun, as no route was the same and you were really lucky if your alien Ozobot choose the fastest route to the rocket.




24 days of Scratch coding book cover and cute penguin
Name

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Tech Age Kids | Technology for Children: Ozobot Maze with Code Stickers and Building Blocks
Ozobot Maze with Code Stickers and Building Blocks
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Tech Age Kids | Technology for Children
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