Coding, playgrounds and literacy in early childhood education: The development of KIBO robotics and ScratchJr

Abstract

This paper describes two programming environments explicitly designed for early childhood education, the screen-based ScratchJr; and the tangible robotic kit KIBO. Both of these tools were explicitly designed to support the learning of concepts and skills of computer science and engineering in a developmentally appropriate way. The design principles are based on the notion of "coding as playground" and "coding as literacy".