Why your 8-year-old should be coding
Learn-to-code startups abound these days, but one in particular is focusing on the very young and is having some success in elementary schools around the country — even underserved schools with no budgets for STEM but a great need for better tools.
The startup is Tynker; it makes a web-based learning platform and a visual programming language for teachers and kids in K-12 classrooms. In a discussion with its co-founder, we found out why teaching kids how to code is so important to him.
Krishna Vedati came to the U.S. in 1991 as a grad student from India. He got a master’s in computer science, then rode the dotcom wave at a handful of startups, including one he founded himself. After IPOs and acquisitions and the eventual bust, he found himself a decade older and wiser but still thinking about solving big-picture problems with technology — this time, a bit closer to home.
“I have two kids, nine and six, a boy and a girl. And they’re exposed to so much technology,” he said in a phone chat yesterday. “But their schools haven’t changed in 50 years. They’re teaching the same stuff in different ways.”