In the Race to Code, Let’s Not Forget the Kids
by Vikas Gupta View Bio
Vikas Gupta, Co-founder and CEO of Wonder Workshop, drives their vision, strategy, and growth as it brings products into the hands of children around the world. Vikas learned to program using BASIC when he was 14 years old and later went on to start a company, Jambool, that was acquired by Google in 2010. Previously he led the payments and web services groups at Amazon. Vikas is a father of two, and it was the time he spent with his daughter, his first child, that inspired him to start Wonder Workshop.
- Research shows that children can indeed grasp the concepts of programming at a young age. However, what’s lacking is the right set of tools to make programming accessible at that age.
- Children of all ages benefit from hands-on play. This is especially true for younger children — and this is why incorporating robots and toys that children can manipulate with code helps make the abstract concepts more accessible.
- We can have a much bigger impact if we are able to get children to grasp the concepts of computational thinking, and encourage them to start applying those to their everyday reasoning.
- Visual cues are better than text in many ways. They are “faster” to read — our brain consumes and processes visual cues constantly. Give children visual cues to decipher what their program is doing.
- Once you learn the basics, coding can be a great playground for unstructured play, which is so important for children — it gives free rein to a child’s imagination, and caters to their whole brain.
Programming and coding can be a powerful way to encourage kids’ intellectual development. But for it to be an effective teaching tool for young kids, it’s important to make sure it’s fun and engaging! Wonder Workshop CEO Vikas Gupta offers a few tips on how to translate programming into the language of play.
In 2012, when I first learned about the lack of computer science education in U.S. schools, it was worrying. Since then a lot of people have picked up the cause, and it is increasingly considered an essential thing to learn — and rightly so. MIT mathematician Seymour Papert put it well: “Programming is the most powerful medium of developing the sophisticated and rigorous thinking needed for mathematics, for grammar, for physics, for statistics, for all the hard subjects. Programming should be a key part of the intellectual development of people growing up.”
Research shows that children can indeed grasp the concepts of programming at a young age. However, what’s lacking is the right set of tools to make programming accessible at that age. If as a society we must embrace introducing this new skill to children at a young age, it is imperative that we also invest in building the coding languages that children grasp, embrace, and are eager to play with. Coding must become the language of play.
So, how do we make coding the language of play for children? What design aspects should be incorporated to help bring these concepts to life and capture the attention of young kids? I’ll share below a few thoughts that have gone into the design of the coding languages we make at Wonder Workshop that are woven into hands-on play, and that caregivers can keep an eye out for when selecting toys for the children in their lives.
- Make sure it’s age-appropriate
Children of all ages benefit from hands-on play. This is especially true for younger children — and this is why incorporating robots and toys that children can manipulate with code helps make the abstract concepts more accessible. We also found that most programming interfaces aren’t designed with children in mind. We took the open-source Blockly tool from Google and had to completely redesign it with children in mind. This often involved inserting constraints and making the interface a lot more visual and playful.
“By making coding easily accessible to kids, we give them a million ways to play, dream, and ultimately change the world."
- Teach the concepts, not the language
At a young age, children aren’t seeking to master a programming language. We can have a much bigger impact if we are able to get children to grasp the concepts of computational thinking, and encourage them to start applying those to their everyday reasoning. As an example, we at Wonder Workshop wanted 6-7-year-old children to grasp the concept of variables. In order to get the concept across effectively, we put in a few constraints, designed the interface to be visual, and provided the context that makes it an effective tool in children’s hands.
- Make it visual and concrete
Visual cues are better than text in many ways. They are “faster” to read — our brain consumes and processes visual cues constantly. Visual cues are also better for retention. Give children visual cues to decipher what their program is doing. Too often, programming interfaces ignore this aspect — debugging is an integral part of programming, and getting visibility into the data and the execution helps.
- Balance structured and unstructured experiences
Once you learn the basics, coding can be a great playground for unstructured play, which is so important for children — it gives free rein to a child’s imagination, and caters to their whole brain. At the same time, children need age-appropriate scaffolding to help them reach a point where the playground is fully accessible to them.
The best play is already perfectly engineered to let kids delight in curiosity, push the boundaries of possibility, and inspire their imaginations to roam freely. By making coding easily accessible to kids, we give them a million ways to play, dream, and ultimately change the world.