One of the best ways you can support TouchArcade is by doing your Amazon shopping through a TouchArcade affiliate link. We’ve set up the easy to remember toucharcade.com/amazon too if you want to type that in or bookmark it. We get a small percentage of anything you buy through any of these links, which otherwise would just go to financing Jeff Bezos’s rotary dial cell phones or whatever else he’s up to now, and it goes a long way to supporting the site at no additional cost to you. These Amazon Items of the Day articles are all products we have used ourselves, and feel are things that the TouchArcade audience might be interested in!
I think you could make a real strong argument that few skills are more important for kids these days to learn than the basic fundamentals of computer programming. Regardless of what they want to be when they grow up, understanding these things will be immensely useful as technology becomes more and more integrated with your life. You could even argue that knowing a programming language is more valuable than knowing a second spoken language. Problem is, as a parent, it’s real difficult to know where to start with all this stuff. The company Kano identified this issue, and has been shipping computer kits specifically for kids to build their own mini-PC and then use it to do a variety of activities to learn the basics of programming. Better yet, their products are based on the Raspberry Pi which is a totally flexible piece of open source hardware that you can just install any number of programmer-centric operating system environments on if they cap out with what Kano offers.
This is relevant today because the Kano Computer Kit is 30% off, bringing it down from its normal price of $149.99 to $104.96 with free shipping. Assembling the kit is the first part of the lessons that Kano packs in, and is incredibly simple. You basically snap a few pieces together, put it in a case, and connect a power wire and a HDMI cable to whatever you’re hooking it up to. This can be a super cheap monitor you have laying around or a TV, everything works.
The above video shows how it all comes together, and is actually based on the older version of the Kano Computer Kit. The new one is a bit faster, and has a few more goodies like some LED lights you can program. Kano’s YouTube channel is unbelievably exhaustive when it comes to different tutorials and troubleshooting guides too. I’ve given Kano Computer Kits to kids as young as seven, and it’s been pretty wild watching them figure it all out. This is the sort of thing I wish existed when I was a kid.
Thanks for checking out today’s Amazon Item of the Day, and as mentioned before, even if you’re not interested in this particular product, buying things from Amazon by first visiting toucharcade.com/amazon is immensely helpful in supporting the site at no additional cost to you. If you want to take things a step further, you can check out our Patreon, but either way we just appreciate you sticking with us and continuing to both visit and contribute to the TouchArcade community over the years! If you’ve got a product you’re interested in seeing featured in an Amazon Item of the Day, don’t hesitate to reach out. The best way to get in contact with us is via email at [email protected] and be sure to include “Amazon Item of the Day" in the subject.
