KidsLab - a podcast for parents and educators passionate about STEAM education

In this episode, I am talking to Rob Bennet, the Co-Founder and CEO of Pixel Press. With Bloxels, one of their services, kids can create their own interactive games.Bloxels is one of his creations that started 7 years ago. Bloxels is all about building video games, a topic that you can imagine resonates very well with kids. According to their website, more than 20k educators are using Bloxels in their classrooms today.Games, Characters, Art and and Backgrounds - those are the elements you wil...

In this episode, I am talking to James Robinson about the Raspberry PI. The Raspberry Pi is a series of small single-board computers with the common goal to promote teaching of basic computing in schools and in developing countries.James is a senior learning manager at the Raspberry Pi Foundation. As a former teacher he is passionate about supporting teachers develop and apply effective teaching approaches for computing pedagogy and training. James enjoys learning new maker skills from k...

In this episode, I am talking to Deborah Carter about New Tech Kids - it’s a technology academy in Amsterdam which teaches primary school aged kids about tech innovation.Deborah is the CO-FOUNDER & MANAGING DIRECTOR of NewTechKids. In 2014, she made the leap into entrepreneurship to launch NewTechKids. With a son enrolled in Dutch primary school, she looked around for a place where he and other children could fall in love with technological innovation and computer science and learn ...

In this episode, I am talking to Johannes Engelke, the initiator of ScoutLab. ScoutLab is part of a German scouting club and organizes workshops and events around topics such as the internet, electronics or the maker movement.Full disclosure, Johannes is a long-time colleague at SAP and the idea for this episode arose during a coffee corner chat. Johannes Engelke is also a Scout since his 10th birthday. He started in a small group in Hamburg where he also did his first steps as a g...

I am talking to Amir Baradaran, the CEO and Co-Founder of Foldio. Foldio creates foldable educational toys that work with the well-known Calliope Mini board.Amir is part of the founding team of Foldio, a company that has its roots at the University of Saarland, Germany. A small team of student researchers took on the challenge to create an educational system that includes paper-based printed circuit boards. Printed circuit boards are essential for modern day electronics and compute...

In this episode, I am talking to Anna Gilbertson and Alana Aamodt from Momentix Toys. They make toys that use chain reaction machines to teach critical STEAM skills to kids 7 and up.My two interviewees make up the founding team of Momentix Toys - Anna and Alana. They met in college while studying physics and that’s also where the idea for Momentix first came up and started to develop.Momentix Toys has been kickstarted early 2020 is still quite on track despite the Corona Pandemic....

In this episode I am talking to Neil Fraser, the inventor of Blockly. Blockly is a JavaScript library for building visual programming editors.Neil works as a software engineer at Google in Mountain View, California, USA - for more than a decade. In his spare time he’s an active maker and tinkerer and also created a variety of open source software. Neil is also the initial creator of Blockly - a JavaScript library for building visual programming editors. We’ve covered block-based, visual ...

This episode features an interview with Bernat Romagosa about MicroBlocks, which can be used to program common educational boards such as the BBC micro:bit, Calliope Mini or the Adafruit Circuit Playground Express.So what is MicroBlocks all about? MicroBlocks is a new programming language inspired by Scratch, that runs right inside microcontroller boards such as the BBC micro:bit, the Calliope Mini or Adafruit’s Circuit Playground Express.After installing the MicroBlocks editor and flashing t...

This episode features an interview with Dennis Baldwin, the creator of DroneBlocks. DroneBlocks teaches STEM and the real-world application of drone technology.Droneblocks is block-based programming for drones. After connecting the Wifi of a Laptop. Tablet or Smartphone, the students can connect to the drone and run their missions. Missions are sets of blocks, typically beginning with a takeoff, followed by various commands such as fly forward, yaw right, etc. and finally - of course - you wa...

In this episode, we’re talking to Sebastian Friedrich, the CEO and Co-Founder of Tinkertoys. Tinkertoys allows kids to design their own toys online which will then be 3D printed and delivered to their homes. So what is Tinkertoys all about? In short, it’s all about showing kids what they are capable of constructing. Using Tinkertoys, kids can create their own toys via an easy to use web-based editor. Once a design is finished, you can choose to have it produced by Tinkertoys and delivere...