Computers made from card, scissors, glue and string may sound like a corporate IT policy in need of more resources. In fact, they’re the centre of a Kickstarter project trying to teach programming and computing skills to children.
Craft Computer Club is the work of Cardiff-based developer and educator Dan Bridge, who is trying to raise £35,000 on the crowdfunding website to launch a book and online community in August this year.
“The Craft Computer is a paper model of a computer children can make using everyday materials like card, scissors, glue, string,” explains its Kickstarter listing, which invites potential backers to pledge between £5 and £5,000 to support the project.
“Through building it and other models they’re introduced to the fundamental principles behind computing such as the important parts inside and what they do, what files are, binary numbers, how pixels create images, how the Internet works and ultimately algorithms and programming. And we do it together, in fun, simple, bite sized pieces.”
Bridge originally developed the model for his five year-old daughter, then found friends asking for copies for their own children. After testing it out on a class of primary-school girls as part of his work as a Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) ambassador, he turned to Kickstarter.
The Craft Computer Club book will be aimed at 5-11 year-olds, with a mixture of guides and games alongside the papercraft modelling. Its companion website, which pledgers will get a one-year subscription to, will add coding guides and video tutorials aiming to help children understand how computers work, as well as internet safety advice.
“I also want to look at the computing your children will encounter in schools, so the online club will be filled with helpful introductions and guides to languages like Scratch, Kodu, Python and HTML5 and devices like tablets, Raspberry Pi, Arduino, Makey Makey etc,” explains Bridge on his Kickstarter page.
His timing is certainly good: September will see the introduction of a revamped computing curriculum for British schools, including programming. Nationwide coding clubs network Code Club recently revealed plans for Code Club Pro, a training initiative to support teachers backed by £120,000 of funding from Google.
With Craft Computer Club, Bridge will be hoping for similar success on Kickstarter to Hello Ruby, a children’s book to teach programming fundamentals that’s being written by Finnish developer and educator Linda Liukas.
With four days to go in her crowdfunding project, Liukas has raised more than $330,000 after setting a goal of just $10,000, and is hoping to pass $500,000 in order to hit her stretch goal of turning her book into an app. “I thought this would be a 20-year project, and hopefully it still can be, but now I get to do a lot more stuff than I expected early on,” she told The Guardian last month.
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