A credit card sized gaming system that teaches coding!? Yes, please! This was my response when I discovered the Kickstarter for Arduboy. As a mom homeschooling a tech obsessed kiddo with some ASD-like traits, this seemed like a great project for him! I backed the Kickstarter and and waited....and waited...and waited for like a year before it finally arrived. And it was EPIC! My son downloaded an open source code for a video game called Flappy Ball (imagine Flappy Bird but with a ball instead of a bird and...you get the picture). He promptly adjusted the code so that the gaps between the pipes were huge, and got a high score of over 300. Then (after photographing the score for proof) he adjusted the code so that there was no gap between the pipes and give it to his older sister and said "here, Emily, wanna play Flappy Ball?" Meanwhile he is trying unsuccessfully to contain his laughter. His sister was not impressed...but I was! This kid is crazy smart and kinda loves to prank people. Fast forward a few months and that beloved little Arduboy was accidentally left in a Burgerville bathroom in Portland. We were hours away before we noticed and weren't able to go back. I called a few times and no one turned it in. My son was crushed.
You can imagine my excitement when Arduboy.com announced the had an overstock of the Kickstarter edition and they were $10 cheaper than the original one that got lost! I jumped on it! Our new Arduboy arrived today and he is already plotting a coding prank on his sister. Code on little man, code on!
