Could your three-year-old learn to code?
The founders of a days-old Vancouver startup think so. Entrepreneurs Nathan Slee and Alexandra Greenhill have started Littlecodr, a card game that teaches kids the basics of software programming.
Players use the cards to lay out a set of instructions (turn right, turn left, stop) another player then has to follow.
The idea sprouted from a conversation Slee and Greenhill had at the recent Grow Conference, a tech gathering in Whistler. Slee, who has young children, asked Greenhill how she had taught her kids how to code.
“My oldest is going into kindergarten and I want to start thinking about it but I’m not a developer myself so I don’t have a good idea of what to do,” Slee said.
“She made this card game where each card has a little instruction … and she’d get her kids to lay them out on the floor and she’d have to act it out.
“She’d follow the steps they’d laid out on the card and she’d bump into furniture or the walls, and she’d have to send them back to redo their code, so to speak, by reordering their cards.”
While coding camps and classes have become common for middle schoolers and teens, the idea of teaching young children the basics of computer programming isn’t new.
Logo, an educational programming language, was created in 1967. Users could see how their instructions made a robotic turtle move across the floor (later changed to an on-screen graphic).
Slee acknowledged that he will have to do some work to market and design the set of cards, which cost $19. But he said over 20 orders have already come in for the yet-to-be manufactured product. Most of that interest came from other participants at the Grow conference.
Slee wants his own children to learn how to code because he believes it will “open doors” for them in the future.
“I’m looking forward to learning how to code along with them,” he said.
@jenstden
