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Sony taps crowdfunding to deliver its kid-friendly coding kit

Engadget

Sony's answer to Lego Mindstorms is a robot-building kit called Koov. It's the first product from Sony's Global Education division, and it's meant to help kids learn to code while they have fun building robots. The company has put the design kit on Indiegogo to gather some $100,000 in crowd-sourced funding while getting valuable feedback on the kits, which include more than 30 hours of kid-friendly coding instruction and multi-colored blocks with sensors and actuators. The project currently sits at almost $5,000 in funding; kits are set to ship out to backers in November. Like Lego's Mindstorms and WeDo, the Koov project aims to help kids develop "21st Century Skills" like creativity, critical thinking, collaboration and communication in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) curriculum areas.