Notes

Piper Raises $2.1 million to Teach Kids to Code Through Minecraft

The possibilities for creating your own mini-computer abound. There are more coding tutorials than even the most dedicated student could possibly do with. What can an ambitious student do? Where should a teacher start? What can an edtech businessperson know the tools that will work?



Venture capitalists are betting the horse that will win the race will include Minecraft because of Piper Kit, a computer that teaches students to assemble their own computer, start playing Minecraft and, doing this, learn to code. MYCMS.ORG The company behind it has raised $2.1 million in seed money from Princeton University, Reach Capital 500 Startups, FoundersXFund, Jaan Tallinn (co-founder of Skype) and Jay Silver (the founder of Makey Makey).



The company, which is based in San Francisco and started in 2014, is planning to use the funding to launch PiperEDU, a version of Piper specifically designed for classrooms with a K-12 age. Every Piper kit includes an Raspberry Pi 3 microcomputer and an LCD display. A powerbank is also part of the. The wooden case that forms the computer's chassis is included. Piper Block, the education-friendly version, comes with extra components to avoid any mishaps in the classroom. Piper has also hired curriculum designers to develop professional development and activities that meet the goals of the Next Generation Science Standards. Thesewill also be included in the new product.



PiperEDU also comes with a discount. While a standard Piper kit costs $300, PiperEDU will cost $250 when a school buys four units. If the price is too high teachers have the option to rent Piper kits on a monthly basis-two for $100 per month-and apply the money earned from rental costs to the purchase.



The company has experienced rapid growth in the past 18 months. After graduating from the co.lab edugaming accelerator at the end of 2014, Piper launched a successful Kickstarter and raised $280,000 by April of 2015, all while developing the first version of the kit. It sold 1300 units on Kickstarter and 1700 more in the rest of 2015. Mark Pavlyukovskyy, co-founder of Piper is predicting that Piper will ship anywhere from 10,000 and 15,000 kits in 2016, particularly with Christmas having boosted the sales last year.



Piper began with Pavlyukovskyy's own educational endeavors and misadventures. He was in the process of implementing an interactive health program in Ghana in 2012 when he fell ill with what doctors believed was cerebral malaria. He was transferred to England. He was in a fever dream when he realized that he could make a greater impact as a programmer rather than a public advocate for health. He was able to recover and he was able to learn programming on his own.



The next obvious step, according to Pavlyukovskyy was to provide this opportunity to children because Pavlyukovskyy thought, "If I can teach myself, so can others!" He tested the idea in India, Ghana and Kenya using the newest Raspberry Pi microcontroller, but the cost was too expensive for the developing communities. "Besides it was just shipping parts," he said.



He focused his attention on the US, but crashed into a second obstacle: children wanted to play Minecraft more than they wanted to assemble a computer or learn to code. The creators of Raspberry Pi were ahead of him: They had already released Minecraft Pi, a unique Minecraft server that runs on the Raspberry Pi, in the end of 2012.


Here's my website: https://mycms.org/