Hisham Sarwar
Project Bloks
Traditionally in Pakistani society, kids learn to craft their skills while they are in college and universities. But technology has transformed their future careers before even entering colleges. Kids are learning to program and are getting a complete understanding of the technical world while they are in schools. They are learning these skills by themselves, schools in our country are still not teaching them the basic technical knowledge.
We know that the future of our children is digital and the best foundation we can provide them for the future success is by building in them the integral thinking and problem solving skills at a young age. Children will learn anything that seems interesting to them and we can make their educational journey a fun and exciting process by following what technological innovations are offering us right now.
Google has taken an initiative to make the learning process fun and interactive for children so that they can fully immerse themselves in their educational journey. The “Project Blok” has the aim of empowering kids by teaching them how to code. It has launched a new hardware platform for kids which can help them to learn the process of coding physically.
Teaching programming in different ways can make it easy for the children to think outside of the box by overcoming the technical obstacles. This process comprises of three steps
The Brain Board:
The Brain Board serves as a tool for children that houses a processing unit based off of Raspberry Pi Zero. It controls and sends power to the other connected units and can also work with Wi-Fi as well as Bluetooth devices.
Base Board:
Base Board work as a connective unit and allows you to design instruction flows.
Pucks:
Pucks is the most interesting; that is the part with whom a kid can actually interact. It can program with various instructions such as turn on/off, move left, jump and even play music. Instructions can be recorded from multiple pucks into a single one and can be prepared at a very low cost.
What Kids can create with this system?
With “Project Bloks” in kids’ hands, they can experiment in the following ways
- Sensor lab:
This kit can let you explore your creativity by experimenting with sensors and you can plot an input to an output such as turning on a light bulb if the temperature falls.
- Music Maker:
Computational thinking can help you to create a music track by inputting various tools, layering the ringing sound and finally playing it on the wireless speaker.
- Coding Kit:
Toys can be sent instructions by putting physical code with this kit and you can control a robot for creating your art work.
It’s easy as learning a language and learning a language is best done young. It programs can stretch a kids mind and help them think better about things that is helpful in all domains. Schools in Pakistan should prepare their children for their distant future lives by incorporating today’s technical innovations while teaching. In a kid, such technologies can arouse desires to learn from the challenging, interesting and rewarding experiences of the digital world which will give them an individual success in future.
