Companies are giving back to the community by developing apps that incorporate fun and coding. Recently, another company has created a coding app for girls as young as 4 years old.
Fortune reported that GoldieBlox has launched a coding app for kids, most especially girls. The Oakland-based company is known for making construction toys for girls via a 2012 Kickstarter campaign.
GoldieBlox is currently selling its building kits in Toys 'R' Us, Target and other retailers. Debbie Sterling, its founder and CEO, has turned the startup into a multimedia company. Its focus is on teaching girls engineering skills.
The coding app for kids is called GoldieBlox: Adventures in Coding - The Rocket Cupcake Co. It is now available on the Apple Store.
The game takes users on a mission to help the lead character Goldie and her friend, Ruby Rails, deliver cupcakes. It will introduce concepts such as debugging and sequential execution to girls.
The coding app for kids is one of the company's new product lines. Sterling has admitted that they are planning on expanding to create a TV or web series and books, among others.
According to Creativity, the app is priced at $2.99. The company has also promised that players will learn the basics of mental modeling, sequencing and debugging "without even realizing they're learning."
Moreover, by 2018, it is expected that 2.4 million girls will need STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) skills. Sterling and her team are helping to meet this need with their recently launched coding app.
This comes after Apple has announced that it will be rolling out a new video game that will teach kids how to code. The Verge noted that the app, called Swift Playgrounds, will be launched along with the iOS 10 beta.
"What we set out to do is create something really inspirational for the next generation of students to make them excited to code," Cheryl Thomas, Apple's VP of software engineering operations, said.
The app will be a 12-lesson series that will start from the basics and will continue through subjects that include algorithms, loops and parameters. The publication added that there is about six hours' worth of content.
