KANO COMPUTER KIT TOUCH: Discover the wonders of coding the DIY way

The latest kit from creative computer company Kano, which has from six-year-olds to over-80s among its customers, is an empowering one-stop way to learn the ropes. In the course of building a portable, touchscreen computer and attaching a keyboard, Kano’s operating system will open up step-by-step a world of tools and narratives, where you can make apps, art, games, music, and more in multiple programming languages.

The touchscreen helps you learn about tactile interfaces and how touch controls work across everyday devices like smartphones.

At home or on the go the screen can be used to paint with your fingers, hack Minecraft, create pieces of music and art with simple block-based coding editors, leading to more advanced environments with real Javascript or Python.

“Your first experience with computing and code should be simple, playful, and powerful,” says Kano’s chief executive and co-founder Alex Klein.

“The Computer Kit Touch takes the experience of building your own computer to a new level, by revealing the secrets of touch interaction. Combining block based and text based coding, it shows you how modern computing systems work. It gets you inside the screen, rather than just in front of it, and provides a set of art, music and programming tools – not just toys.”

The Computer Kit Touch is available Argos, £199.99 from www.argos.co.uk and Kano.me .

Included in the package is a 10.1” HD touchscreen, as well as a wireless keyboard with trackpad.

You build a USB board and equip it with a sound sensor.

The brain is based on the award winning Raspberry Pi single board computer and comes preloaded with the latest version of Kano OS, a creative and educational operating system, with support for touch control, three hours of battery life, fast performance mainstream apps like YouTube and Whatsapp, and increased storage capacity at 16GB.

Harry Potter Kano Coding Kit £79.99 is available from www.argos.co.uk and Kano.me