Coding for Kids
ZAGG
04/30/13
In a technology-immersed world, it’s no surprise that there are a number of startup companies aiming to teach people how to program, code, and interact with technology. A few of these startups, however, are specifically targeted to teaching children programming languages just like they would learn foreign languages such as Spanish, French, or Chinese.
Tynker is one such company that is delivering a programming educational experience to the youth, with their goal being to eventually get schools to incorporate computational thinking and computer programming concepts into the core curriculum of education.
Currently, only teachers or educators can request an invitation to Tynker, but a home-use product is coming soon. The service is billed as a “new computing platform designed specifically to teach children computational thinking and programming skills in a fun and imaginative way,” according to the Tynker website. The Tynker software is browser-based, so it can work on any computers educators may have available for their students.
According to All Things Digital, Tynker eventually hopes to expand its programming curriculum services to high school students, where students would branch from learning about programming concepts into using actual programming languages like Python or JavaScript. One of the inspirations for Tynker came from the CEO, Krishna Vedati, sending his son to a Stanford University coding camp where his son learned to create a Flash-based game. Vedati told All Things Digital that he noticed his son simply learned to “regurgitate” the lessons given to him at the camp, without really understanding what was happening to code the game. That is why Tynker is designed to give kids a basis in fundamentals before teaching code.
