Matthew MacLaurin took the stage during today's TechFest keynote to show us his Boku project, a programming environment for children.
Boku turns programming into a game – it runs on an Xbox or a PC. There's no typing, so you can use the Xbox controller by itself, and the user interface enforces syntax (no syntax errors) so kids don't get frustrated.
The main character in the "game" is a robot named Boku who lives on an island. Players give Boku different instructions that vary in complexity to make him do different things. Each programming task represents a level in the game, and the programs get more sophisticated as the player advances through levels.
In about a minute, Matthew created a simple program that instructed Boku to run around his island eating all the red apples.
Matthew says that his young daughter plays this and explains to him that Boku only eats red apples.
He skipped ahead a few levels to show us a soccer game where a team of Bokus try to kick green apples through a soccer goal made by two palm trees.
The idea is to teach kids logic, analysis and design as well as the practical skills learned by putting programs together. I must admit that Boku looks like a lot of fun. If they put it out as an Xbox game, I'd pick it up.
