It’s about three weeks until Christmas, and you’ve neglected the wants and aspirations of your children. Fear not. I’m here to help.
A company in London called Kano Computing has produced an intriguing device aimed at children. The product, as you might imagine, is called the Kano. It’s a computer about the size of an elf’s shoebox, and it costs $150. Like a regular computer, the Kano can get onto the Internet and play music and games. The device, however, is really intended to introduce kids to programming skills and some basics about computer software and hardware. It’s like a Computing 101 course in a fun, nifty package.
The computer arrives as a sort of DIY kit with a plastic case, orange keyboard, wireless dongle, motherboard, memory, speaker, and various cables. The first challenge with the Kano is to turn these parts into a working computer. It took my six-year-old son about 30 minutes to complete this job with minimal help from me. (My primary task was acting as the Muscle, cramming bits of plastic together when my son didn’t want to push them together too forcefully and break them. Wuss.) Along the way, my son learned what a motherboard looks like, got to fasten some wires for the speaker, and generally left the exercise with a feeling of accomplishment. Take note, parents. This is a job that can be accomplished on Christmas Day while inducing minimal trauma.
Photograph courtesy Kano
It’s worth issuing a major warning here. The Kano costs only $150 because it does not come with a monitor or any type of screen. You’re meant to provide that on your own. You can hook the device up to your TV with an HDMI cable, which is included, or do something similar with an old computer monitor. You can also turn an iPad into the screen for the device, but that requires a bit of familiarity with the product. So to keep the happy times going on the day, you’ll want to think through this screen issue ahead of time.
After building the computer, the fun really begins. You turn the Kano on, and it goes through a boot sequence that will be familiar to any true nerd. The machine runs a version of the Linux operating system, which means that various instructions and checks flow across the screen in a command-line interface rather than a graphical interface, such as Windows. Then, after 30 seconds or so, a graphical interface does pop up, accompanied by a short, catchy tune. It’s got a bright orange background and a handful of large, cartoonish icons.
My son naturally went right for the Minecraft icon, and he got a bit of a surprise. Instead of simply playing Minecraft, he was asked to code it. The Kano guided him through a series of programming tutorials in which he could issue commands to make buildings and other structures instantly instead of assembling them virtual stone by virtual stone. There were about 15 coding lessons, and they got progressively harder and taught fundamental concepts about variables, if/then statements, and repeating loops. My son went at this for about 90 minutes or so, until all the lessons were completed, and his enduring interest in the lessons were what really sold me on the product.
There are similar coding lessons for Pong and other games. There are tutorials for using commands to make the computer say particular things and other CLI jobs. There are apps to download and the full Internet to explore. Along the way, your child will rack up points for accomplishing tasks and level up to do more things with the system.
The Kano product has done a remarkable job of making Linux usable by mortals. Many companies have tried and failed to produce a decent Linux desktop for adults; Kano has made something functional for kids. The software updates on its own, it detects different types of screens automatically and configures the display for them, and it has a unique look and feel aimed at youngsters. “The big challenge was that we were building around a platform traditionally aimed at hobbyists [Linux and the Raspberry Pi motherboard] and had to make this feel like a fun, fluid, mainstream consumer experience,” says Alex Klein, a co-founder of Kano.
The other item of real note with the device is its keyboard. It’s a wireless device that talks to the computer via Bluetooth and has a large touchpad on its right side. The clever thing about this is that kids can sit back on the couch, using their TV as a display, and accomplish most tasks by gliding around the touchpad. “There would have been too much to fiddle with if we had done a keyboard and a mouse,” says Klein. The Kano team found the keyboard while tooling around Shenzhen looking for cool bits and bobs for their machine. A manufacturer there had designed a version of the keyboard originally for helping people go through presentations during corporate meetings. Kano worked with the company to shrink the device and add the Bluetooth functions.
The fact of the matter is that for $150 you’re getting a computer with limited horsepower. Kids can and will get frustrated when they click on an icon and it takes a few seconds for the computer to do anything. Kano has tried to get around this in a couple of ways. When you click on an app, the computer makes a noise to let you know that it’s on the job. Since the device runs Linux, the company has also hired people who can tune the software for top performance, and Kano has set some high scores on benchmarks. These measures don’t quite make up for the slowness, though, especially among kids used to poking at apps on tablets and smartphones and watching them spring into action.
The purpose of Kano, though, can overcome its limitations. If your child is at all into solving puzzles or creating his or her own world via something like Minecraft, he or she is likely to take to this device—at least for a while.
