![]() ![]() Sharma said, “This started with academic people who appreciated what Osmo could do. But if you put things down physically, you can understand the concepts easily.” “The question is: ‘What are the fundamental blocks of coding?'” Sharma said. The product will be available in Apple retail stores on June 1. That allows Osmo Coding to sell for just $49, rather than $200 like some educational products, Sharma said. You can also add a loop block to get a command to be done over and over. So the blocks don’t have to be computerized, and there don’t have to be a ton of them. The move blocks also have directional arrows that a child can reset, so a single block can be used as a command to move a character in any direction. If you want to do a command over and over again, such as get a frog to walk a number of spaces, then you simply use the move command and then put a yellow number on top of it, indicating how many times the command should be executed. Kids can get fairly sophisticated using Boolean (if-then) commands.Īnd Zekelman’s design also economizes on blocks. A red block can perform one kind of command, and a green block can do another. So when the iPad’s camera looks at them, it understands what computer function that the child is trying to create. Rather than put smart electronics into small toys, Osmo created relatively dumb blocks. A recent college graduate, she had some insights that proved to be very useful in making Osmo Coding more intuitive and inexpensive. Osmo Coding’s unique blocks are the brainchild of Ariel Zekelman, a 23-year-old industrial designer at Osmo. So our goal is how do we build a Lego-like intuitiveness into a rich coding language in a physical space.” Putting things together like Lego bricks is very intuitive for children. The good coders efficiently tell a computer what to do. “Coding is nothing but putting things together to tell a computer what to do. With kids, it’s very important to introduce it right,” said Pramod Sharma, CEO and cofounder of Osmo, in an interview with GamesBeat. “Congress is talking about making coding mandatory. ![]() They can do just about anything in the freeform world. Children can program Awbie to shake trees, munch on strawberries, plant flowers, or tickle other characters. You can use the blocks to make a frog-like character, Awbie, move around an environment. The child puts down blocks in a sequence, then presses a “play” button on a green block, and then the program executes on the screen of the iPad. In this case, the blocks serve as commands for a computer program. The app uses computer vision to analyze the scene and see the blocks that you place in front of it. You attach Osmo’s reflective mirror to the iPad and activate an app that taps into Osmo’s artificial intelligence technology. Osmo Coding works much like the previous apps. ![]()
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