London-based Kano has one other code equipment within the works so as to add to its STEM focusing on gamified instructional line of build-it-yourself youngsters’ merchandise forward of the present-buying vacation season.
The equipment is being priced at $249.99/£229.99, and is up for pre-order from at the moment — by the Kano web site and by way of “select retailers and e-tailers” — with transport on account of begin on November 1.
The Computer Kit Complete takes the following apparent step of mixing two prior Kano merchandise: its unique (screenless) Kano pc equipment and the enlargement Screen Kit that adopted, in a brand new all-in-one pc equipment Kano it’s billing as a “laptop”.
“First, you assemble your own laptop with a step-by-step storybook, learning how batteries, sensors, speakers, and USB boards work. Then you begin making art, games and apps in real programming languages like JavaScript and Python, leveling up slowly from blocks to typed text,” it writes of the brand new product.
As with its prior Kano kits, the brand new pc equipment runs its Kano OS — which it describes as a “family friendly educational operating system”, noting that it consists of parental controls and a content-blocker to filter what youngsters can see once they’re utilizing the machine to browse the Internet.
Though it additionally claims the equipment pc “works as a powerful DIY PC too”, flagging the presence of apps like YouTube, WhatsApp, Google Maps and Wikipedia, in addition to its personal vary of “creative computing applications”, that are aimed toward encouraging youngsters to study coding rules and even write traces of code whereas they mess around with digital content material. Its apps embody Hack Minecraft, Make Art, Terminal Quest and Story Mode.
Ahead of the vacation season final 12 months Kano outed a collection of linked machine kits — comparable to a programmable LED array and a gesture controller. But this 12 months it seems to be to be doubling again down on its core pc equipment idea. Kano’s co-founder Alex Klein confirms that whereas the Screen Kit is being stored across the new Complete Computer Kit is the Kano product “we highly recommend”.
The startup, which was based in 2013 and counts Saul Klein (previously a accomplice at Index Ventures) as a co-founder and an investor in a private capability, has raised round $15M in VC funding up to now, plus additional funding by way of a crowdfunding route which was the way it kickstarted the enterprise.
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