Liam is an 8-year-old boy who loves coding, robotics, and anything involving a computer. He started coding when he was five, with a Tobbie II robot that he got for Christmas. He had heaps of fun making Tobbie walk, play music and display messages. Over the last few years, we’ve grown the collection of robots and tried out a range of different coding platforms.
These days, Liam is doing some really cool stuff, far more than we ever expected:
- building and coding his own robots,
- creating animated stories based on stories he’s written at school,
- designing video games,
- creating mods for Minecraft
- pairing hardware with different coding platforms to expand what it can do
He also attends robotics classes with Bricks 4 Kids, which gives him ideas for new projects and highlights some of the cool features that the hardware and coding platforms can do. At the moment, it’s only his second term attending classes, but he’s looking forward to doing more and getting into the advanced stuff soon.
He’s learning more every day, across different platforms, and is increasing the complexity all the time.
We are incredibly proud of what Liam is achieving, especially with the level of coding he is now working with. When he started showing an interest we wanted to support him, but had no idea where to start or how to code. Everything that we’re working on has been self-taught, with some trial and error.
This is the first generation for whom learning to code is pretty mainstream, but their parents and teachers didn’t have the same exposure. It can make it difficult to get started, and we hope that by sharing Liam’s projects it will encourage and inspire others to start their own coding journey. It’s incredibly rewarding, and we’re certainly excited about where it might take Liam next.
I hope you’ll join us on this journey!
