Top Brands: Sphero - Wonder Workshop - Makeblock - Amazon Kids
BLACK FRIDAY: Amazon Fire Kids Pro 10"
BLACK FRIDAY: Amazon Fire Kids Pro 10"
NEWS$show=/search/label/news
Here's where you'll find all the latest news about technology for children. We love to follow cool new inventions on Kickstarter and we hunt out all the latest announcements about tech toys and gadgets for the coming Christmas holidays. You'll also get our take on children's technology stories in the media.
REVIEWS$show=/search/label/review
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.
STEM$show=/search/label/stem
STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. In recent years there is an increased focus in these areas of study. We like to include Art and Design too, so we often talk about STEAM (A stands for Art). At Tech Age Kids we believe Coding is a new literacy and children need to understand how technology works, practice making skills and grow in their curiosity to make a better future for us all.
CODING$show=/search/label/coding
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.
Let's Start Coding is a hardware programming course that includes physical hardware and online educational material. It's based on an Arduino compatible Maker Board, it's grown-up coding but introduced in a gentle way.
I tried out the Let's Start Coding kit with my 10 year old son. The age recommendation for the Let's Start Coding kits is 13+ but didn't have a teenager handy. More on age recommendations later.
Disclosure: We were sent a Starter Kit and Ultimate Kit for the purposes of this review. As always our opinions are our own.
Unboxing
Regular readers will know that this is the bit where we're actually interested in the box! We're a bit obsessed with storage especially for kits that have lots of small parts.
The Let's Start Coding kits come in a lovely fold out storage box which is great for finding parts and perfect for packing them away until next time. We approve.
We also like that the kits include a set of cards that explain the components and include commonly used reference information. The cards are kept together with a wristband which was a big hit with my son - he wore it while he was coding.
In the starter kit you get the Maker Board itself, an extension board for adding hardware, 3 single colour LEDs, two RGB LEDs, a speaker and 4 push buttons. You also get a nice retractable USB extension cable.
In the ultimate kit you also get an LED strip, an LCD screen, sound, light and temperator sensors and a battery pack so you can create portable projects.
Getting Started
When you open the box there's a sticker giving you the address of the website so you don't have to go hunting for it.
Once on the site you're told how to connect the board. We had to use the included USB extension cable due to the position of the USB ports on my son's laptop. It's really good to see what a USB connector looks like inside.
The instructions take you through installing a driver and a Chrome browser add on. My son whizzed through this and was soon starting the first lesson.
Once you've installed the Chrome extension, the Arduino C++ code editor is embedded into the lesson and project web pages.
The website says that the kit works on Windows, Mac OSX and Chromebooks. I quickly tested it on my Ubuntu Linux machine too. You don't need a driver for Arduino on Linux and you can install the Chrome extension.
The website says that the kit works on Windows, Mac OSX and Chromebooks. I quickly tested it on my Ubuntu Linux machine too. You don't need a driver for Arduino on Linux and you can install the Chrome extension.
The Lessons and Projects
There are 14 lessons to get you started with using the Maker Board. Each lesson includes working code that you can download to the board straight away. There's also a video and an explanation of concepts.Learners then have to change the code to complete a set of challenges.
In the very first exercise my son misunderstood the diagram as showing that the long leg of the LED goes on the left and the short leg goes on the right - it's the other way around, but I can see how he got it wrong. I think his prior experience went against him here, he knew he needed to find out which way around the legs went and thought he had found the info.
Luckily you don't damage an LED by placing it the wrong way around and the power pins (which could damage the LED) are blocked initially which is a really nice touch.
The error was easily fixed and I encouraged my son to look at the info on the cards! He didn't really have any trouble following the instructions after that.
He loved the code editting approach. Each lesson begins with loading a pre-written program on to the Maker Board. Once it's working, learners work through a set of challenges that require changes to the code.
This worked really well. My son can cope with typing text but he's not particularly fast which means it slows him down.
This approach was a nice next step from working with block-based editors which meant that he could quickly get to the interesting stuff rather than spending ages typing boring set up code.
Each lesson also has a quiz to test that the concepts have been learnt.
There are also lots of projects which don't have as much supporting material but do have sample code to get you started. There's tons of content here which teaches some really useful stuff. For example one project gives an expected completion time of 8 hours to build and code an alarm clock using the LCD screen in the ultimate kit.
Creating your own projects
My son immediately started using the lessons as a jumping off point for his own ideas and doing things that weren't in the challenges.
He made the four button keyboard then added four LEDs so that they each would light up when a button different was pressed. The kit includes three LEDs so he asked his Dad for another one in a different colour.
There's also an RGB LED in the kit which is used to create a similar extension to the project.
The Editor
The embedded editor works really well - you don't have to keep switching between editor and instructions. Because the instructions are challenges rather than step by step coding it wasn't a problem to keep scrolling between the challenges at the instructions.
There's no way to create an account and save your work. There's not even a download button. So you have to be careful not to lose work. You can copy and paste the code out and into a text editor to save it. I can imagine a lot of frustration if learners lost work on a big project that they have put time into.
The Ultimate Kit
The Ultimate Kit includes some pretty cool extras, as well as sensors and a battery pack you get an LCD screen and a strip of LEDs.If you get the Ultimate Kit we'd actually recommend hiding the extra stuff until your learner has worked through the Starter Kit lessons and projects. Otherwise they'll just want to jump straight to the cool stuff without learning the basics. (OK, I admit it, I went straight for the LED strip ... My son has more discipline.) You can also buy an extension kit to get from the Starter to the Ultimate Kit.
The LCD screen is a really nice addition. It allows learners to work at a much lower level than they're probably used to. It understands a set of characters (letters and numbers) and you can actually encode a few characters of your own design to load onto the screen.
Age Recommendation
The age recommendation for the Let's Start Coding kits is 13+. I didn't have a teenager handy so I got my 10 year old to try it out (under supervision.) He has done some electronics before including BBC micro:bit programming and some bread board GPIO programming with the Raspberry Pi.The kit uses Arduino C code so kids need to know their way around a computer keyboard. They also need to be able to follow instructions and be careful with electronics components which are delicate and fiddly.
The early lessons and beginner projects are just the right level for him. A 13 year old would progress faster and the advanced projects mean there's plenty there for an older learner.
Verdict
Let's Start Coding has been a big success for us. It's a perfect intermediate step between beginner boards like the BBC micro:bit and an Arduino plus breadboard set up.
The form factor of the boards and the battery pack in the Ultimate Kit mean that the Maker Board lends itself to real projects rather than just learning.
"Mum I want to do more with these kits."It looks like there's scope for future expansion too, there are pins labelled for motors (which aren't included in the current kits) and you can work with additional hardware.
This is just an initial review of the kits. We expect to return to Let's Start Coding as we make projects with the Maker Board.
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/fa-dice/ RANDOM$type=blogging$m=0$cate=0$sn=0$rm=0$c=3$va=0$src=random-posts
- 2013
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- 3d printing
- 3DTin
- accessories
- activities
- adafruit
- advent calendar
- adventure games
- amazon
- amazon fire
- amazon prime
- android
- angry birds
- animation
- anki
- app
- app toy
- app toys
- appcessories
- apple
- apps
- arcbotics
- architecture
- arckit
- arduino
- art
- artificial intelligence
- astronauts
- astronomy
- augmented reality
- automaton
- awards
- battle bots
- battling robots
- bedtime
- big kids
- big tablets
- bigtrak
- bike
- binary
- birthday
- bitsbox
- black friday
- blockly
- blogging
- bloxels
- bluetooth
- board games
- book
- books
- boolean box
- breadboard
- bricks
- brixo
- buying guide
- camera
- cameras
- card game
- careers
- catroid
- celebration
- cellphone
- ces
- chemistry
- chess
- christmas
- circuit cubes
- circuit playground
- circuit scribe
- cleaning
- climbing
- code clubs
- code-a-pillar
- codebug
- coder
- coding
- cognitive learning
- communication
- comparison
- competition/challenges
- computational thinking
- computer
- computer games
- computer science
- computer vision
- computers
- computing
- conductive playdough
- connected toys
- construction
- conversational ai
- cozmo
- craft
- craft cutter
- creative thinking
- creativity
- crochet
- crowdfunding
- css
- cubs
- curiosity
- curious chip
- cyber monday
- dads
- data
- deals
- dens
- design
- design process
- design thinking
- digital parenting
- digital skills
- disability
- disney infinity
- dog tech
- dolls
- drawing
- drones
- duinokit
- earth day
- Easter
- ebooks
- eco
- edblocks
- edison
- edtech
- education
- egypt
- electricity
- electronic pets
- electronic toys
- electronics
- electronics kit
- electronics kits
- electtronics
- elementary
- elenco
- energy
- engineering
- entertainment
- ereader
- ereaders
- esafety
- escape the room
- event
- ewriter
- exercise
- family
- family tech
- fathers day
- Festival of Code
- fiction
- fire
- fitbit
- fitness
- fitness tracker
- flotilla
- flow charts
- flutterbye fairy
- flying
- force awakens
- force friday
- future
- gadgets
- games
- games console
- games consoles
- gaming
- gift guide
- gifts
- girls
- giveaway
- glow in the dark
- grace hopper
- grove
- hackaball
- hacksoton
- halloween
- halloween costumes
- hardware
- headphones
- health
- hexbug
- hexbug aquabots
- hexbug project
- high school
- history
- home
- home education
- homeschool
- hot toys
- hour of code
- html
- humanoid
- ICT
- in app purchasing
- indiegogo
- industry event
- innotab
- innotab 3
- innotab 3s
- internet access
- interviews
- invention
- ios
- IoT
- ipad
- ipad mini
- iphone
- jacquard
- japan
- java
- javascript
- k'nex
- k'nex robotics
- kano
- keyboard
- kickstarter
- kids
- kindle
- kindle fire
- kit
- kits
- kodu
- kubo
- label printer
- languages
- laptop
- laptops
- last minute
- leap motion
- leapfrog
- leappad
- leappad 2
- leappad ultra
- leappad2
- leapreader
- learning
- learning resources
- learning tablet
- learning tablets
- leds
- lego
- lego boost
- lego chain reactions
- lego mindstorms ev3
- lego power functions
- lego technic
- lego wedo
- let's start coding
- lights
- lightseekers
- little kids
- littlebits
- logiblocs
- logic
- logical thinking
- loom
- machines
- magnetic
- make it
- makeblock
- makedo
- maker
- makey makey
- making
- mardles
- mars
- mars rover
- marty
- math
- maths
- mbot
- mbot ranger
- me arm
- meccano
- meccanoid
- meccanoid 2.0
- merge vr
- mews
- michael faraday
- micro:bit
- microbit
- microcontroller
- microscope
- microsoft
- middle school
- miles kelly
- mindstorms
- minecraft
- minecraft mods
- mixed reality
- mobile
- modular electronics
- monsters university
- morse code
- mothers day
- motion capture
- motors
- mover kit
- movie
- movies
- mu
- mu toys
- munzee
- music
- my first robot
- national dog day
- nature
- new
- new year
- news
- news coding
- nikola tesla
- nintendo
- nintendo switch
- ohbot
- ollie
- on the web
- opinion
- origami
- osmo
- outdoors
- ouya
- ozobot
- papercraft
- paperwhite
- parental controls
- parenting
- parrot
- pc
- people
- pet tech
- pets
- phone
- photography
- photon
- physics
- pi day
- picks
- pimoroni
- pinoccio
- pixel kit
- pixelart
- play
- playstation 4
- plezmo
- pocket code
- pocket money
- pokemon
- pokemon go
- poll
- pre order
- pre-teens
- prehistory
- preschoolers
- primary
- printable
- products
- professor einstein
- programming
- project
- projects
- puzzles
- python
- racing
- raspberry pi
- reading
- reivew
- remote control
- research
- resource
- resources
- retro
- review
- rights
- robot
- robot dog
- robot fish
- robot wars
- ROBOTERRA
- roboticals
- robotics
- robots
- role models
- role play
- romo
- romotive
- root
- rover
- safety
- sam labs
- samuel morse
- sandbox
- schools
- science
- scratch
- scratchjr
- screen time
- screenless
- screens
- sensors
- servos
- simbrix
- skills
- skylanders
- skylanders superchargers
- skylanders swap force
- smart pens
- smartphone
- smartwatch
- snap circuits
- social media
- solar power
- soldering
- sonic pi
- sony koov
- sound
- space
- sparki
- speaker
- speech sythesis
- sphero
- sphero mini
- spider
- star wars
- stars
- STEAM
- stem
- stikbot
- stop motion
- stop motion studio
- storage
- story
- strawbees
- students
- subscription
- subscriptions
- sugru
- summer
- swift
- tablet
- tablets
- tangible coding
- tech
- tech age
- tech craft
- tech is bad
- tech is good
- tech toys
- tech will save us
- technology
- technology will save us
- teens
- teknikio
- tekno
- teksta
- tenka labs
- tesla
- textiles
- thames & kosmos
- the extraordinaires
- tim berners lee
- tinkercad
- tinybop
- toddlers
- toot-toot
- top pick
- touch
- toy
- toys
- travelling
- TTS
- TV
- tween
- tweens
- tynker
- typing
- ux
- vehicles
- videos
- view-master
- views
- virtual reality
- voice assistants
- voice recognition
- vr
- vtech
- web
- websites
- wifi
- wii
- wii u
- windows 8
- wonder workshop
- wowwee
- writing
- writing. education
- xbox one
- xyzprinting