Check out Einstein’s Agent and cast your vote at moretonbayinnovationawards.com.au/peopleschoice

Firstly, lets have a look at one of the Coding Sites – CodeCombat.  Our kids love this and with all the talk about introducing coding into schools it is great that sites like this make coding fun.
Yes it really is geared towards a gaming/learning module, but don’t let that or its name put you off. It has kept our kids and their friends entertained and at the same time they are learning Python programming. Basically it is designed especially for kids and starts with easy challenges and builds up to higher levels of programming skills.

You learn to code by designing the programming to enable you to battle in a medieval realm. At each level players are set a number of tasks – usually to collect gems, or defeat monsters and to then move to the exit. As players move up the levels they are gradually introduced to new commands like loops, conditionals and variables. Players collect Diamonds and these can be invested for better armour, weapons and programming commands.
You can select which language you want to program in by clicking the gear icon in the play bar. Programming language options include Javascript, Python, Clojure, Lua, Io, orCoffeeScript

In Summary:
Its Free to play
Runs direct from the Website
You can sign up and create an account, but you don’t have to.
No programming Experience needed
Programming Languages include Python, Javascript

All in all its a great intro to programming.
If you have a great Educational App or site you would like to see added in here then please let us know via our Contact Us page.

“Just a sec”… “Do I have to?” etc were the replies.

Her 11 year old sister was actually pretty good, and would do it without argument or prompting most days. But they were both more interested in playing Minecraft than using the computing tools in their power to advance their education. And who can blame them?  Minecraft is addictive and it’s fun. Its an outlet. Don’t get me wrong, I think Minecraft has its advantages and I can see they have learnt quite a bit from playing the game – improved typing skills, great spacial skills, and some of the worlds they build are amazing. But it’s still not something I want them playing all the time. And I just don’t want the arguments either.

And just 2 weeks later we don’t get any argument. Actually we don’t even have to ask them to do their homework. They come home from school and they are straight into reading eggs, Khan Academy, Mathletics or the new CodeCombat platform where they are learning python programming.

So what changed?
We started using a utility called Einstein’s Agent – actually we developed it – and our kids have been our test subjects.  It’s a utility that runs in the background on your computer and the kids earn Game minutes by doing educational activities.  So by doing Reading Eggs, Mathletics and any other activities you designate as Educational Activities they earn “Game minutes” that they can use on any games that have been added to the games list.  No minutes, means no Gaming. Simple as that.

And it works…
We no longer have to tell them to do their online homework. It’s done. Actually it’s even better than that. The desire to earn the minutes has become greater than the thrill of playing the games. And slowly the desire for learning is overtaking the thrill of gaming also. It’s being rechannelled into real self development. Transforming screen time into Quality time.

Our 8 yr old has spent many hours over the past few weekends doing Reading Eggs and CodeCombat to earn her game minutes. Her goal was 1000 minutes, which she achieved easily.

Yes, she has now used up some of those minutes playing Minecraft, but her desire to obtain her goal again is high and she is working her way up to that goal again. I have no doubt she will achieve and surpass it easily and in the progress she is learning programming, Maths and English.

This is currently an alpha release – which means that there is a lot of functionally still to come, but what is there does work, and it might just tied you over until the full release in December.
Feel free to download and share it around.
Please let us know how you go with it and if you encounter any problems or have any suggestions.