Many years ago they used to send children to places in order for them to be apprentices. Want your child to become a baker? Have him apprentice under a baker. How about a blacksmith? Simply make a deal with a blacksmith and you’re all set. The tradesman gets (almost) free labor and the child learns how to make a living when they grow up. Times have changed drastically, and for the better, but one thing is still true: it’s an excellent idea to get a child interested in something that can help them as they grow older.
Programming is something that many parents don’t think about teaching their kids, and often it’s because they don’t know how to do it themselves. Anyone who has taken an introductory programming course knows that it’s not as easy as it appears to be. Thankfully programs now exist that make programming much easier and faster, but there is still a steep learning curve. That’s why parents who are interested in feeding their children’s love of technology, in a way that will actually help them in the future, may want to look at robots like the Robonica Roboni I Programmable Gaming Robot.
This gaming robot is like nothing you’ve ever seen before – it looks like some sort of space rocket with two oversized wheels on it to maneuver with and comes with a controller that looks like it belongs with a high tech gaming system. When you take him out of the box you can simply play with Roboni-I and can have him roll around the house, much like a remote control vehicle.
But what you don’t see is the programming part. Roboni-I comes with a program that’s titled Command Center. With this program your child can actually go to the computer and can reprogram Roboni-i. The programming itself is extremely easy, using a drag-and-drop interface that even younger children can understand. With this interface your child can teach their robot how to spin, move around, and can even teach it how to flash its lights. A tutorial comes along with the program to help children (and their parents) to learn how to utilize it to the best of their ability. This is one toy that’s not only fun, but that will help future programmers to begin learning just a bit about how, and why, programming works.