Ultimately, our goal is to enable kids to develop computational thinking (a set of foundational problem-solving skills) from a young age through coding experiences that are playful, tactile, and collaborative.
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Unlike Scratch, which requires kids to sit in front of a computer, Bloks are physical blocks, or as Google is calling them pucks and boards.
Meanwhile, the “Base Boards” are connective units that let you design instruction flows. The Brain Board is able to communicate with just about any device using WiFi and Bluetooth through an API.
Google has developed a Coding Kit reference device to show designers, developers, and researchers possible forms.
It should be noted that the project is still in a development stage, and a launch date has not been provided.
Still, there’s no doubt that Google will help bring more attention to the growing trend of physical computing toys and, most importantly, introduce tons of children to the challenge and joy of programming computers before they are old enough to even conceive of a line of code, much less write one.
Pucks are programmable with different instructions, such as “turn on or off”, “move left” or “jump”. You can than add multiple Base Boards and complementary Pucks to the Brain Board. Bloks is a system of toy blocks that kids can connect together to control other toys and learn the fundamentals of coding in the process – a bunch of blocks with arrows on them, for instance, could be used to direct a robot. In fact, a Puck can be as simple as a piece of paper with conductive ink. They can also take the shape of different forms – things such as switches, dials or buttons.
Designing hardware is much more challenging than creating software and Google hopes that Project Bloks will remove the barriers to help designers, developers, and researchers focus on creating useful tools.
It makes coding a physical experience so kids can work with their hands, learning through computational thinking while they play, the firm explains in a blog post.
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The Base Boards read the Puck’s instructions, and facilitate the movement of the command to the Brain Board. It also provides the other boards with power, and contains an API to receive and send data to the Base Boards.
