Us A Line


Tag: computer programming

June 14th, 2017

Interview: Matt Richardson, Executive Director, North America, Raspberry Pi Foundation



Matt Richardson.¬†Used with¬†permission.



































Anything else you’d like to mention?


Related posts
Interview: Mitchel Resnick of the MIT Media Lab’s Lifelong Kindergarten Group
Interview: Cameron Wilson of Code.org
Interview: Jon Mattingly of Kodable

Subscribe to Innovation

February 14th, 2014

Interview: Jon Mattingly

Jon Mattingly is the co-founder of Kodable, an iOS app that teaches basic computer programming concepts to young children.¬†We talked about the Kodable app, why kids should learn to code, and the potential computer science education offers for economic development in Mississippi.

Kodable Welcome Screen


MATTINGLY:¬†I actually learned BASIC, an old programming language, when I was about six or seven. I had this old Windows 3.1 computer my parents let me use. So I started playing around with that and I found BASIC. As I got older, I wanted to start a company and I realized how important programming was so I picked it back up and kept running with it.

Did you study programming in college?

MATTINGLY:¬†I went to the University of Louisville to play football as a walk-on there for a couple of years. I was in the business school and interested in entrepreneurship, and I just wanted to start my own company. I realized that if I wanted to start a tech company,¬†I shouldn’t outsource it‚ÄîI needed to know what I was doing. That was around my junior or senior year. It was already too late to change my major at that point, so I got an entrepreneurship minor and taught myself programming on the side.

How would you describe Kodable?

MATTINGLY:¬†It’s an iPad app that teaches kids the fundamentals of programming. We teach kids logical thinking. We teach them to think critically. We teach them to problem solve. We teach them to think like a programmer.¬†You need to know how to come up with solutions to problems‚Äîyou take a set of conditions, a certain situation, and then create a solution to that problem. Another thing that’s pretty simple to understand with Kodable is you just have a maze. You give your fuzz [game character] instructions to get through the maze.

How did you come up with the idea for your app?

MATTINGLY: I had¬†an initial idea for an online rewards program, called Surfscore,¬†for web apps, and it didn’t really work out too well.¬†Later, we were talking to some parents, and they kept mentioning how they wanted to teach their kids how to program. So, we decided it sounds like there’s something here. With my history of learning to program when I was so young, we decided to take it and run with it.

You have a co-founder, Grechen¬†Huebner.¬†How has it been to have a female co-founder in the male-dominated tech industry?

MATTINGLY: It’s been great for our company. She loves what she does. Her personality is evident in Kodable. I always tell her that there’s no way a programmer like me could make something that looks as good as Kodable because she doesn’t come from the “head down in a text editor, programming” mindset.

Grechen is really passionate about getting more girls involved and has really tried hard to make a product that looks attractive to both genders. We‚Äôve actually got more girls using Kodable than guys. Over half of our users are girls right now, and I think a lot of that is because you can see her personality and her drive reflected in the app.

Kodable is designed to teach programming concepts to kids as young as kindergarten. How quickly do kids that young pick it up?

MATTINGLY:¬†We‚Äôve actually had kids as young as 18 months using Kodable, which is amazing to us. The best age range is from five to eight.

Some kids, especially ones who‚Äôve grown up on iPads with parents that are pretty tech savvy, ¬†just get it. Right away, they‚Äôll be zooming right through all the levels and they can finish it pretty quickly. But if they haven’t been exposed to the thought process and the thinking, then usually it takes a little longer. But kids tend to pick it up, either way, pretty quickly. It doesn’t take much longer than, say, five or ten minutes for a kid to figure it out.

Why do you think young kids should be learning these programming concepts that your app teaches?

MATTINGLY:¬†It’s like learning a language. If you start learning a language too late, it’s hard to pick it up because your brain does most of its development before you‚Äôre 12. With young kids, their minds as still open‚Äîthey can learn how to think critically¬†and problem solve. And the earlier you can start kids learning that, the better off they‚Äôll be with it later in life.

It doesn’t mean they have to become a programmer. But it can help kids in so many different ways just by teaching them when they‚Äôre still young and their brains are more receptive. They‚Äôre like sponges. They just pick up everything.

I understand the app has been piloted in some schools?

MATTINGLY:¬†Yeah, we‚Äôre being used in quite a few schools. It’s numbering in the hundreds now, maybe even thousands. They end up finding out about us through word of mouth, and we try to maintain relationships with as many schools as possible. I email everyone that signs up for the Kodable learning guide. I email them personally and talk to them to see how they‚Äôre doing and make sure that everything’s going alright.

Our focus has been to help people teach with Kodable. Because a lot of these teachers, they want to teach programming because they realize how important it is. But they don’t actually know where to start. So our goal has been to demystify the process in a more adult-friendly way and relate actual programming to what we do in Kodable. So teachers can see how you‚Äôve got this concept in programming‚Äîmaybe it’s functions‚Äîand we explain how functions are used in actual programming. And it’s catered toward Kodable specifically. It’s not like a programming textbook. You know, famously, programming text books take you through one chapter of really guided stuff and then they just drop you off a cliff and then teach you all these crazy concepts and you just give up because it’s so frustrating. You want to make sure that adults can see it’s not as hard as some people might think it is.

How has the reception been from teachers? What kind of things are you hearing?

MATTINGLY:¬†One of the best things that we‚Äôve been hearing is that kids that use Kodable are farther along and have it easier when they move on to products like Scratch that are targeted to older age ranges.

I had one person who emailed me about the Hour of Code. One of the apps that their school was using was Light Bot. That person’s child was the only one in the entire class who understood some of the material that they were teaching. Because he‚Äôd been using Kodable already, he was actually able to go out and help the other kids, to teach them how to do it.

Can a state like Mississippi that has relatively few tech companies, and many challenges related to education and poverty, benefit from teaching people how to program computers?¬†

MATTINGLY:¬†I think it could be huge. One of the best things about computer science is it’s become so cheap to program and to make apps. You know, you don’t really need a whole lot of money anymore to start a company or become a programmer. The Raspberry Pi costs $35. You hook up a keyboard and a TV to it, and you can program and make apps.

There are so many resources right now for learning how to program.¬†Just the other day, there was an article about a homeless guy who learned to code and he put an app in the app store. So, if you want to learn, there’s really no excuse why you can’t.¬†You want to focus on finding something you love‚Äîa problem that you want to solve‚Äîand build on it, make it better, make that problem go away for you.

How important is it for schools in Mississippi to teach coding?

MATTINGLY: It’s a tidal wave that’s coming and you don’t want to be left out. The UK is actually mandating programming education for the entire country starting next year. Every child in China learns programming. And, you know, it’s happening in America, too.

Parents see how important this is. Over 18 million people participated in the Hour of Code. It shows that people want computer programming to be taught.

Related posts
Interview: Mitchel Resnick of MIT Media Lab
Interview: Cameron Wilson of Code.org

Subscribe to Innovation

February 8th, 2014

Interview: Mitchel Resnick

Mitchel Resnick, PhD, is a LEGO Papert Professor of Learning Research and¬†director of the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at¬†MIT Media Lab. His research group developed the “programmable brick” technology that inspired LEGO MindStorms robotics kits. More recently, the group developed Scratch, a popular programming environment for kids.¬†Dr. Resnick received the 2011 McGraw Prize in Education and was listed by Fast Company as one of the 100 Most Creative People in Business.

We spoke about the importance of creative learning, effective strategies for digital literacy, and the impact of initiatives to introduce computer science into more classrooms.

Dr. Mitchel Resnick. Photo by Joi Ito.

What is the Lifelong Kindergarten Group?

RESNICK: My research group, the Lifelong Kindergarten Group, develops new technologies and new activities to engage people in creative learning experiences. So we help people learn through designing, creating and expressing themselves.

We call the group Lifelong Kindergarten because we‚Äôre inspired by the way children learn in kindergarten. In the classic kindergarten, children are constantly designing and creating things in collaboration with one another. They build towers with wooden blocks and make pictures with finger paints‚Äîand we think they learn a lot in the process.


I understand there’s a long history at MIT of using computers as a tool for education.

RESNICK: It goes all the way back to the 1960s with Seymour Papert, who started working on the Logo programming language. It was a way for kids to be able to write computer programs to control things. Now, at the time, most people thought it was crazy because computers cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. But Seymour recognized that computers were going to become less expensive and would proliferate throughout the world. So he saw there was an opportunity to use computers as tools for young people and that young people would have access to that technology. He knew that the best experiences would result from¬†not just using computers to deliver information, but¬†letting kids take control of the technology so they could create things.

Seymour would say it’s important that you don’t want the computer programming the child; you want the child programming the computer. You want the child to be in control. So Seymour started these ideas all the way back in the 1960s. His ideas then started to get out into the world when personal computers became available in the late 1970s into the 1980s. The Logo programming language became one of the most popular ways children were using personal computers in schools in the 1980s.

I was deeply influenced by Seymour. He was my most important mentor, and I continue to be inspired by his ideas about children learning by designing and creating things. Our work on LEGO Mindstorms and¬†Scratch were deeply inspired by the ideas from Seymour Papert.

Why is it important to provide kids with opportunities for creative learning?



You‚Äôve spoken about “learning to code” versus “coding to learn.” What’s the difference?

RESNICK: Many people are starting to get interested in learning to code, or learning to program computers. One reason a lot of people are interested is because it provides opportunities for jobs and careers because there’s a growing need for professional programmers and computer scientists. So that’s one reason for learning to code‚Äîthere really is a need and there are economic opportunities.

But I think there’s a much bigger opportunity. I often make the analogy to learning to write: Some people who are learning to write will become professional journalists or novelists, however most people aren’t going to make a living just through their writing. But we still want everyone to learn to write, because once you learn to write, it lets you organize your thinking, and it helps you express your ideas in new ways. I see it as being the same with coding. Although coding does provide some economic opportunities for jobs and careers, I think the most important reason for learning to code is it lets you organize your ideas and express your ideas.

Coding lets you learn many other things. So that’s why I think what’s most important is not just learning to code, but coding to learn. As you‚Äôre learning to code, you‚Äôre learning many other things.

What kinds of skills does coding teach?

RESNICK: You learn how to organize your ideas. That is, you take complex ideas and break them down into simpler parts: How to identify problems and then “debug” the problems. How to take the ideas of others and reformulate those ideas to meet your needs. Those are all common things that people do when they‚Äôre coding. But those are also common things you do in all types of problem-solving activities and design activities.

Even if you‚Äôre doing something that has nothing to do with coding‚Äîif you‚Äôre organizing a birthday party for a friend or developing a new marketing plan for your company‚Äîyou use some of those same ideas. So those approaches, which you can learn through coding, can then be applied to all different kinds of activities both in your personal life and your work life.

Should every child learn to code? Should coding be a school subject like algebra or chemistry?

RESNICK: I do think every child should learn to code, and I would approach it similarly to writing‚Äîthe same way we teach children to write and then let them use their writing in all other courses. You learn to write and then use your writing in writing book reports and writing science reports‚Äîyou use it in all other subjects. And I think similarly, it would be great for all kids to code and then use that knowledge in many other classes.

Events like Hour of Code have raised the visibility of coding and given people an opportunity to get some sense of what coding is all about. But it only will be meaningful if there’s a follow-up and follow-through. If people take that initial spark and turn an hour of code into a day of code or a week of code or a month of code where they continue to explore the possibilities of coding.

So it’s the same thing. If you just spend an hour learning to write, it wouldn’t be so useful. On the other hand, if that sparks your imagination and then you continue to do more things with it, then it becomes meaningful.

How is Scratch changing the way people think about computer programming?

RESNICK: We emphasize that Scratch is a way to express yourself creatively, to express your ideas. It’s also a social activity: You can share your projects with others and learn from what others are doing. Many other organizations that are trying to help people learn to code don’t focus on those ideas. They often are just focused on students learning the concepts of computer science or learning how to solve puzzles with programming.

We take a different approach with Scratch. We see Scratch as an opportunity to express yourself creatively and to work collaboratively. I think it’s really important to have that as a core underpinning for what coding is about. Our ultimate goals with Scratch are to help young people think creatively, reason systematically and work collaboratively. We think those skills are incredibly important in today’s society.¬†

In Mississippi, we have some big challenges relating to education and poverty. Can computer science be a game-changer for us?

RESNICK:¬†I think it’s always dangerous to assume that there’s any one thing that’s going to make a big cultural change. But it could be one element.


Would you say that computer science can engage students that may otherwise be not that interested in school?

RESNICK:¬†I do think it’s incredibly important to build on young people’s interest. People are going to be most interested in learning when they‚Äôre working on things that they really care about. The computer, if it’s used the right way, has the opportunity to engage kids in doing things that they really care about. But I want to add that doesn’t happen automatically. The computer can also be used in a way that kids won’t be interested in.

So it’s not just about using the computer‚Äîit’s the way in which it’s used.

There aren’t very many credentialed computer science teachers out there. Are credentials necessary for teaching computer science to young people?

RESNICK:¬†I agree with you that there’s a challenge. Many teachers don’t have much background in this area. I think further into the future, we‚Äôll get more teachers over time with more expertise. But, for now, I think there are great resources for teachers to learn enough to help young people get started with coding and using computers in creative ways.

I would also encourage schools to support teachers in learning new things so that they can help support these young people‚Äîand also hiring new teachers who can bring new expertise into the schools.¬†This isn’t going to happen overnight. It’s a long-term process.

How should K-12 schools approach the teaching of computer science?



So you‚Äôre saying more hands-on learning?

RESNICK:¬†Well, it depends on what you mean by hands-on. I would emphasize learning by creating and experimenting. If you put your hands on something, and you‚Äôre just following the instructions to build a model, then that’s not a very good activity even though your hands are involved. What’s important is to give kids the opportunity to create things and experiment with things, to use their imaginations and to think creatively.

What are your thoughts about getting more women and minority students involved in computer science?

RESNICK:¬†I think that’s linked to what we talked about earlier with supporting people and building on their own interests. Often, in all school subjects, including particularly computer science, you‚Äôre taught in one way which might be appealing to some people but not others. We need to make sure we provide multiple pathways into activities.

For example, when we developed Scratch, we made sure that people can use Scratch to do all types of different things. You can make a game, you can make a story, you can make an animation, you can compose music. That’s because different kids have different interests. If we only had computer programming for making games, that would be appealing for some kids and not for others. We wanted to be sure to provide multiple pathways so that kids from all backgrounds and all interests are able to follow their interests and become creative learners.

Related posts
Interview: Cameron Wilson of Code.org
Interview: Jon Mattingly of Kodable

Subscribe to Innovation

November 5th, 2013

MWB Sponsors Coding Workshops for Students, Teachers

Maris, West & Baker, with assistance from, the Mississippi Department of Education, Innovate Mississippi, the Mississippi Development Authority and Venture Technologies, is sponsoring a series of computer programming (coding) workshops for students and teachers in Mississippi during the month of November, which has been designated “Innovation Month” in Mississippi.

Highland Teaching Coding

Why is an advertising agency promoting k-12 coding? The way we see it, teaching kids to code is an economic imperative for participation in the computer-driven digital economy that’s fueling growth and development around the world.

According to the computer science advocacy group, code.org, our country is projected to have a shortage of one million needed computer science graduates by 2020. While other countries around the world have expanded opportunities for early computer science education, computer science has actually been in the decline in America over the past ten years. Promoting computer programming education is vital to American economic interests, and it can be an absolute game-changer in Mississippi.

To imagine the impact computer programming skills can have on our state, consider the following:

‚Ä¢ Apple’s App Store has created nearly 300,000 jobs in the U.S. according to the company figures. Considering, Apple represents just one segment of the fast-growing market for mobile apps, it’s clear that the popularity of mobile devices is driving significant economic growth.

‚Ä¢ The American¬†computer gaming industry now¬†rivals our movie industry. It took the game Call of Duty: Black Ops II just 15 days to pass the $1 billion mark in gross sales. That’s faster than the record achieved by Avatar, the highest grossing film of all time.

‚Ä¢ Increasingly, the world’s largest and most powerful companies are in the software business. Think Microsoft, Apple, Google and others. Those companies that are not in the software business depend on proprietary software for their daily operation and economic vitality. In the words of serial entrepreneur and venture capitalist, Marc Andreesson, software is eating the world.

We need only look to our next door, Louisiana, to see how other states are positioning themselves to spur software development. The state is investing $15 million over the next ten years to increase the number of computer science graduates at LSU. In September, the state¬†broke ground on a new $55 million urban development in downtown Baton Rouge that will include a new IBM Services Center. The development is expected to create 800 new direct jobs.

But success in the software world doesn’t require that type of investment. Knowledge and creativity are the critical assets, not money. Mississippi’s great musical invention, the Blues, was first played on cheap guitars purchased from the Sears’ catalog and front-porch diddly bows. From there, the blues took the world by storm. Our next great revolution could owe its existence to a $300 laptop.¬†Coding, in that sense, levels the playing field. If you “know the code,” anything is possible.

Let’s dream big and make innovation happen on that scale here in Mississippi.