Dolls Who Code (Forbes)

Posted on March 05 2018

Dolls Who Code (Forbes)

Coding for kids are spreading quickly to toymakers and bunch of new coding toys are expected soon!

Mattel announced a series of Barbie-branded coding lessons with Tynker and it will "techify" itself by creating more early coding toys for young kids and embedding natural language processing capabilities into Barbie’s Dreamhouse.

Here is the summary of the article. 

LurnBot

"LurnBot rents robot kits to kids to learn programming, helping parents save money, reduce clutter and help the environment."

Summary

  • Toymaker Mattel announced a series of Barbie-branded coding lessons of which curriculum is the product of a partnership with Mountain View, Calif.-based startup Tynker.
  • Women are significantly underrepresented in STEM and make up less than one-quarter of those employed in STEM occupations. Mattel want to leverage Barbie to inspire girls to pursue the things they love.
  • Mattel wants to "techify" itself which includes everything from creating more early coding toys for young kids to embedding natural language processing capabilities into Barbie’s Dreamhouse. Also, they have many other initiatives planned for utilizing Barbie to inspire and teach girls to enter STEM-related fields.

  • The programming “experiences” created by the startup’s standing partnership with the toymaker have already reached nearly 4 million kids. Now, with Barbie’s help, they want to reach a collective 10 million children by 2020. 

 

For the full article, please visit http://fortune.com/2018/02/20/mattel-barbie-girls-code/.