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App Uses Kids' Obsession With Phones to Teach Coding

Tiny Bop makes beautiful apps like Everything Machine which uses a smartphone's camera, gyroscope, light, speakers and microphone to teach coding through games.

Released on 10/14/2015

Transcript

[Narrator] A smart phone is like a black box.

It's jam packed with technology but you can't see any of it.

It does kind of make you wonder, what's under there anyway?

A new app from Tinybop called Everything Machine

wants to help you find out.

The app, which costs $3 on IOS pops the hood

to your smartphone and let's you use its components,

you know, the stuff like a camera, light, microphone

and gyroscope to build totally new machines.

Using a visual programming language, you just drag and drop

these inputs and outputs into order.

It can take some trial and error to get it right,

but that's part of the learning process.

Once you figure it out though,

you can make almost anything imaginable.

You can turn on a light with a swipe,

or take a video with a tap.

Wanna change the way that video looks?

Just add a modifier.

Pretty cool, right?

You can increase the complexity of your machine

by adding more components and logic gates,

but our favorite is an old standby.

Turns out the app makes for a killer

digital whoopee cushion.

[farting sound]