How to Become a Featured Maker

“Oh my gosh, did I win something?!” 

“Whoa, this is my first featured project and I’m only a few months in! Am I allowed to be featured yet?” 

“I was like, ‘What’s this little badge on it?’ And I click it and it says that I have been chosen!”

These are just some of the things kids have exclaimed when they realized they’ve been chosen as a Featured Maker! Over the years we’ve had more than 200 Featured Makers, and each one plays a huge role in our community, both on and off-line: Some of them advocate for endangered animals with their projects, others create dynamic elements like characters that respond to user input, and others help their classmates and teachers with coding. Celebrating kids’ accomplishments is crucial to helping them develop key 21st-century skills; when a kid is selected as a Featured Maker, they get the opportunity to showcase what they’ve learned, and it gives them motivation to grow their skills. Read on to learn more about how your child could be Tynker’s next Featured Maker!

What’s a Featured Maker?

A Featured Maker is a child who creates and publishes an exceptional project on Tynker. Our editorial team reviews every Tynker project that gets published and features several of the best projects every month! After we interview the maker, they get their very own article on our blog that tells everyone about their coding accomplishments. Kids love it because, well, who doesn’t like to be famous? Parents love how being a Featured Maker encourages their child to learn more and continue being a great coder. Featured Maker Henry explains how getting featured and getting a lot of likes helped him want to continue coding: “I created one project and it was Marble Run 1. I saw a gold medal on it and I saw the likes. It got 100 likes! When I saw 100 likes, I got more motivated to code more stuff into it.”

How can your child get chosen?

We’re on the lookout looks for projects that demonstrate originality, creativity, and coding skills. Being a Featured Maker means that you understand coding concepts and have applied it in a project in an interesting way! Winning projects are diverse, ranging from projects that invite the user to create art, like Byron’s ‘Lines’, while others ask the user to create a custom outfit, like Alesya’s ‘Girl dress up (original)’. Originality and creativity are must-haves for Featured projects. If your child hasn’t been chosen yet, encourage them to keep working at their coding skills and making original projects! You may also send us links to their projects at support@tynker.com if you believe that it is worthwhile for our editorial team to review and feature it.

How will your child find out that they’re a Featured Maker?

If a project is selected, we’ll put a special badge on it. We’ll also have a pop-up appear while your child is using Tynker that prompts them to enter their parent’s email address.

When you see the pop-up, don’t ignore it! When you or your child enters your email address, you’ll get an automatic reply email that looks like this:

The email informs you that your child has been selected as a Featured Maker and invites you to interview with Tynker. By responding to this email, you’ll initiate a conversation with our Community Manager, who will be conducting your interview process.

Why an interview, and how does the interview process work?

A big part of being a Featured Maker is having your very own article on the Tynker blog! The article includes information about your child, like why they like to use Tynker, how they get inspiration for their projects, and their advice for other kids just starting out with Tynker (we do not disclose personally identifiable information like last names, city, or school name). We publish a new Featured Maker article on our blog every week! An interview is the best way for us to gather the information we need to create your child’s blog post; plus, it’s a fun way for us to get to know the top coders in the Tynker community.

Our Community Manager will arrange a day and time for an interview, which usually takes place via video chat. We’d like to interview both you and your child, so please schedule a time that works for both of you. Prior or during the interview, the Community Manager will arrange with you a few details that are critical to publishing the article, such as photos, a media release form, and the link to your child’s project. That way, we can provide a demo of your child’s project in the blog post!

What happens after the interview?

We’ll transcribe the interview and put it in a queue to be published. Articles can take several months after your interview to get published, so don’t worry if you don’t see it on the blog right away. Once your child’s article goes live, we’ll post the link on our social channels and inform you via email. We’ll also include in our follow-up email a coupon for a 25% discount off a Tynker plan!

Your child’s article is published. Now what?

Being featured by Tynker is a prestigious award! We only have a few hundred Featured Makers among the millions of coders on Tynker. If your child is selected, you should be very proud of them! You can share the great news by posting the article link on your social media channels and with family and friends (and be sure to tag us @gotynker). You can even share it with your child’s school, teachers, and classmates! This is a great way to let everyone know about your child’s accomplishments. It’ll also give your child the opportunity to share their coding skills with friends as they explain what a Featured Maker is.

Some of our favorite Featured Makers include Juan, who gets inspiration from her toys for her coding creations; Oskar, who made a game featuring his favorite soccer star; and Cadence, whose project lets you dress up Daisy the Dog! All of these projects demonstrate ingenuity and show off how each kid brought their ideas to life with code. You can see all of our Featured Makers on our blog! 

We’re so proud of our Featured Makers and all the members of our Tynker community! We hope you’ll encourage your child to level up their coding skills to create some stellar projects. Who knows–maybe your child could be Tynker’s next Featured Maker!

As the #1 coding platform for kids, Tynker has learning content that will meet your child’s needs! With 39 block and text programming courses, 11 iPad courses, 3 iPhone courses, and 3700 learning modules, your child can learn coding in a way that fits their interests–whether that’s Minecraft, Barbie, DIY tutorials, or original projects!

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