Kano: computer literacy in a box

Survival in the 21st century requires digital literacy.

Not everyone needs to be a coder but everyone needs to understand how code works. They must understand how a computer will relentlessly execute a program for as long as it has the electricity to do it.

This truth now defines commerce and culture. It has meaningful implications for our civil liberties. The computers have taken over.

If computers are magic, if their workings are mysterious, you have no means of understanding this future. You have no recourse when a computer fails you. You have no means of investigating injustice perpetrated by algorithms.

But if you understand the rudiments of what makes computers run, what their capacities and limitations are, you have a chance of making sense of an increasingly complex world. Widespread comprehension is essential to social and economic equity.

As technology is bent toward use by government, that understanding is also essential to making informed decisions, as citizens, about how that technology should be used.

Which all sounds fine.

But how do you move the needle on computer literacy in a way that scales?

Kano is an interesting example.

Sharing a computer: like sharing a pencil

Negroponte was right on that point.

To really get to know a computer, you need one of your own. You need the ability to play around with it, to break it, and to put it all back together again. Computers are lessons in systems thinking. Those lessons work best when you’re free to yank pieces of the system out just to see what happens.

Kano, at $150, is an affordable yet powerful computer. It’s just cheap enough you can hand it over to a kid without being too worried what happens to it.

The logic board itself is a commodity Raspberry Pi 2, giving the user a whole 1GB of RAM and a quad core processor. What makes the Kano a Kano is the accompanying hardware and software.

Included in the box is an adorable orange keyboard/trackpad combo. It’s wireless and rechargeable. Students also get a USB WiFi dongle, a sturdy plastic case, attachable speaker, and even some stickers to decorate their new computer. For storage, an 8 GB microSD card is included, preloaded with Kano’s fork of Raspberry Pi Linux.

That’s right: $150 buys you a portable Linux box with performance specs similar to an iPad. Kano plugs into any TV with HDMI input and the keyboard doesn’t mind you sitting on a couch.

So the practical concerns of having a computer of your own, they’ve been cut down as much as practical. If you have a TV and $150, you’re ready to go.

That’s important.

Connecting the dots

Where Kano excels, though, is explaining in simple terms why anyone should care to play with this computer.

The student slides a handsome cardboard case out of a bright orange sleeve. Once they open it up, they’re confronted with a dazzling array of parts and bright documentation.

A colorful picture book leads the student through assembling the Kano into a usable computer, explaining the parts and why they matter. The tone of the docs is exuberant and clear without being condescending.

A second paper book explains the workings of computers. But the real magic begins once the Kano is powered up.

The software begins with a couple of brief tutorials on using the keyboard and trackpad. Then the student creates their avatar, personalizing the rest of the Kano experience.

Because, yes, gamification

Kano uses achievements to create a sense of progression through its bundled software. That software focuses heavily on making the scarier parts of the computer seem approachable.

I was especially impressed with Terminal Quest. This app is an interactive tutorial on using a unix shell. A series of lessons explain how to move around and manage a computer within a command line interface.

There’s even Minecraft and Pong, with visual programming tools and more interactive tutorials that let students fiddle with the games’ internals.

As students tackle these challenges, Kano awards them with achievements. The software keeps track of these and doles out avatar customizations as rewards.

But you’ve still got a unix box

Aside from the spoon-feeding of tutorials, students also get a complete unix installation to play with. Warts and all.

As soon as students want to leave the beaten path and start bending the computer to their whims, they’ll find a real terminal, VNC, even an IDE to write code in.

Is everyone going to get that far? I dunno.

But $150 is a pretty low price to find out. A lot of magic can happen between a bored kid and an otherwise-idle computer. Dropping the cost to make that pairing possible is pretty exciting.

Especially given the class divide between the folks making computer software and everyone else, it’s an amazing win to have a computer packaged this way. All you need is this box and a TV to start learning.

There’s not going to be a silver bullet for computer literacy. The world moves too fast now and there’s just too much to cover. What Kano can offer, though, is a low-cost way to give a kid complete ownership over a computing environment. That’s a powerful step in the right direction.

From assembling the hardware to tinkering with the software, this is a teaching approach that puts students entirely in the driver’s seat. As a gift for young minds curious about computers, it’s a no-brainer.

I’m so glad it exists.