When I was eight years old, Santa brought our family a ZX Spectrum. A black keyboard with tape deck, it plugged into the TV and changed our lives. That year I got a similarly black “ghetto blaster” which kept me occupied the endless hours when my father and brothers dominated the computer and TV playing American football. I never really got a look in.
Fast forward 30 years, I spend a lot of my time on computers but I still have no idea how they function. So when Kano got in touch to share their computer kids can build I was intrigued. I was intimidated but excited too. It was a chance to show my children what computers used to be like before swiping and touch screens, before Google and Bing and cute kittens. I’m clearly not the only one: the Kano launched on Kickstarter asking for $100,000 and instead raised $1.5 million.
It truly is a computer that you can build yourself. I know, because my girls did. They sat together, reading the instruction manual and putting the whole thing together whilst I did my best impression of a Mammarazzi, taking photographs and video. The look on their faces alone when they realised they had built something together, something that worked, something that could be programmed, was a moment I will cherish. It would definitely be worth the £119.99 price tag.
The Kano kit comes with everything you need to get started building a computer. It’s all stylishly packaged, like a chic box of chocolates, which in many ways it is. The kit is beautifully designed- bright colours, cleverly sized with children in mind, parts that fit together easily, colour-coded, simple to operate. It absolutely fits the original brief given to the company co-founder by his 6 year old nephew, who wanted a computer he could build himself.
And my girls have done just that. They attached cables and inserted USBs and connected the bright orange keyboard to the speaker and they attached the whole shebang to the TV monitor. They have built a computer, plugged it in, given it some basic commands, following the instructions in the book that came with our kit. They have chased a rabbit across the screen, followed key commands and pestered me to do more.
The next challenge will be connecting it to the wifi and seeing what amazing things we can do with Book Number Two. I fear it may involve apps and games we have thus far avoided. I have Googled “Things to do with a Raspberry Pi”, taken note of the Kano Forum, and I am ready for the next stage in our family adventure: learning together with my children. Teaching them that there is always more to learn. What could be a greater lesson than that?
And if my opinion isn’t enough, you should check out when the Actually Kids built a computer, what Jennifer Jain thought of the Kano and how the HPMcQs learnt to code with Kano. Vevivos tries out coding for kids.
Kano retails at £119.99 including postage.
Disclosure: we were sent a Kano kit for the purposes of writing this review.
Ooh I love this. Thanks for sharing. It looks like so much fun – I’ll definitely have to get one when my son is a little older. I love the idea of encouraging our kids to learn tech skills – it’s something they’ll find so useful in life and doing something like this will give them a huge confidence boost.
Technology is so different to when we were young – it is great that our kids can now learn it at home and in school and Kano have come up with such a great product. Thanks for mentioning me 🙂 x
This really is the way forward for our youngsters – I’m hoping my two will become smart enough to build be a whizzy robot that can look after me in my dotage.