I expected to just be buying a course with materials and some hardware, but I feel like I invested into a resource for my niece to keep learning throughout her childhood, that will push her as far as she wants to go with it.
Quick side note - What I found is there are intrinsic lessons learned throughout the course, particularly about reading instructions precisely and not skipping around, which is an unsung benefit of what's being taught in the course - you have to follow the instructions to make things work right, and if you skip something or cut corners, it's going to bite you at a later step - an extremely valuable lesson for a kid to experience early in life, in my opinion. Not to say you can’t just skip to the next lesson, but.... Basically it shows, by example, the value of focusing on a task for the benefit of delayed gratification. If I had learned that at a younger age, I may be writing this review from my yacht.
Getting started with building the raspberry Pi, screwing on the protective case, and having everything in one spot to get started was super fun and engaging for my niece. While it was simple for an old IT guy like myself to figure out, she (7 years old), was able to follow along with the instructions and get everything set up with just a little bit of guidance on my part. There was a huge sense of pride and accomplishment beaming from her, and there's definitely the "cool" factor of her having built something when she got the Pi set up for her to start the courses.
Starting the courses, the material is self-starting, in that she doesn't need any help to get to the next steps or chapters. Going step by step, she started making the animations in scratch, and got a real kick out of making the "sprites" (characters) do things based on how she set them up. It was really amazing to watch her go from having zero experience with a computer whatsoever, to two courses later (about an hour) she's laughing because she made the character go way off the screen and appear again after a few seconds.
I particularly like how everything is on the Pi already and you don't need to get on the internet to enjoy all aspects of the course. The materials are updated online, so I personally downloaded the latest versions and put them on her Kindle, but that's not a requirement - it's all there already.
The support I received when I reached out to Boolean Girl was absolutely phenomenal. I am the type of person that usually annoys support people with too many questions, but they are truly passionate people that put a lot of time and thoughtfulness into their responses, so now I feel like an expert resource for my niece. I know there will always be someone behind the scenes at Boolean Girl pushing the product to be better, and if there is ever an issue, I have absolute confidence it will be handled by professionals that really care about what they do.
| Processor | 1.5 GHz |
|---|---|
| Card Description | Integrated |
| Average Battery Life (in hours) | 1 years |
