Kano Pixel Kit

• Recommended Grades: K+
  

The Pixel Kit is a computer made of lights. You build it yourself and code it with simple steps. It senses sound and displays data. Anyone can get started with the storybook inside, and it works with any Mac, PC, Linux, or Kano Kit.

The experience begins by physically building the Pixel Kit with an illustrated storybook, which demystifies light, data, and the computer’s hardware. Then, you bring the Pixel Kit to life with step-by-step coding challenges: Turn on the lights, make them change color, react to sound, scroll sports data, paint them, animate them, and more. The Pixel Kit comes with over 40 creative projects, suitable for all ages, which demystify key programming concepts – by making them physical. Draw and animate your own characters, visualize the weather, build games, create a custom news ticker, and paint with light in 16 million colors.

The software experience is driven by the Kano App. Kano Code starts with blocks, and levels you up to real typed text in Javascript. The pedagogy is based on hundreds of hours of real-world testing and the Kano team’s combined multiple decades experience teaching programming – simple steps, storytelling, game mechanics, and projects drive the flow. The Kano App also connects to Kano’s online community, Kano World, where anyone can share and view other creations, see what others are making, bring them to their Pixel Kit, and remix them.

The idea for the Pixel Kit came from the Powerup Kit, a small lightboard Kano released exclusively to its community in 2015. The feedback was so positive, that the team was inspired to take this concept a step further, and the Pixel Kit was born as a sophisticated, standalone, expressive computer, with a light board as its centerpiece. The Pixel Kit is a unique creative coding kit that combines the physicality of digital pixels with learn-to-code flows. Perfect for beginners all ages, the Pixel Kit inspires people to get creative with technology, understand how it works, and not just consume it. It also provides a platform for the arts, enabling animations and drawings to respond to music, sound, and data.

• Draw and animate Pixel Art: Learn about sprites and create inspiring animations. Paint your own characters with light. Then make a game.
• Weather station: Visualize the weather by connecting to real-world data to create a live display that tells you if you need an umbrella or not, or code a “picnic alert” so you never miss a perfect, sunny day.
• Art frame: Design still and animated images, and bring them to life with pixels. Interact with your creations using the 4-way joystick.
• Scrolling Headlines: Display the news with a few blocks of code. Bring real data feeds into your Pixel Kit.
• Sports score: Play an animation when your favorite team scores. Connect your code with real sport headlines and event feeds.