The Kano project is having a great success raising funds for the project on Kickstarter. It’s a kit that allows you to build a computer based on the famous Raspberry Pi thanks to a series of components and two manuals. Started on November 19 with the goal of reaching $100,000, the pledges exceeded that figure in little time. At this moment, the amount of the pledges is $868.049 but there’s time until December 19 to make an offer.
The Raspberry Pi project was born with an educational purpose but it soon became an ultra-cheap micro-computer among the favorites for anyone who wants to tinker with hardware and software but also for professional projects. The Kano project was born with similar goals, in particular for those wishing to learn how to assemble hardware and program, at the same time using the computer to play.
The project is based on elementary concepts, meaning being simple and as fun as Lego and it must be possible to assemble it and learn to use it by yourself. After a year of planning the first prototype was created, developed after listening to many people ranging from youngsters to teachers but also artists, players and the open source community.
To keep costs low and at the same time have a robust and versatile platform it was chosen to use free software and the OS Kano operating system was based on Debian Linux. the interface built on it resembles those of console games to run software projects that allow you to play but also to develop various projects, both games and other types.
A special software allows you to learn how to program in a simple way putting together blocks of a project using animations and drawings representing various pieces of it, whether they’re data structures or instructions. Eventually, the result can be compiled into a Python or Javascript program.
You can make an offer as low as $1 but higher pledges allow you to have something special in return. Depending on how much you offer, you will have stickers, t-shirts and so on such as having the kit before anyone else, a workshop in a school or other istutuzione chosen by you and other extras.
The Kano kits should go into production in July 2014. Given the enthusiasm shown, with plenty of offers some of which really relevant, we can already say that the only doubt can relate to any practical problems. The idea is really good and confirms the recent trend towards small and cheap computer excellent for educational use which can then be used for many other purposes depending only on the inventiveness of those who use them.
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