If you did, you were thinking way outside the box when it comes to traditional education — and, at the same time, firmly within the box. Of Pocky, that is.
Snack company Glico has released a new app that intends to educate while their younger consumers enjoy their products.
Fans of the Japanese flavour-coated cracker snacks aren’t just based in Asia. Pocky have been around since the 60s and are popular all over the world. It must be the array of different flavours put out by parent company Glico, and the satisfying crunch each Pocky stick makes as consumers chomp them down in mere seconds.
Now, the treats are coming with the satisfying crunch of educational coding exercises for younger Pocky fans. Glicode is a new mobile app that seeks to teach basic coding techniques to children.
The app involves getting a 3D cartoon character to maneuver through a series of simple tasks: moving, jumping, etc. In order to command the character to make the appropriate move in his environment, the app user takes a picture of Pocky, arranged into specific shapes that indicate the instructions for the character. The app then converts the picture into the code necessary to move the character. Hopefully, the app excites young minds and helps build their coding fluency.
A move towards greater digital literacy and programming for children is popping up more and more these days. Amid the rise of coding camps and the introduction of coding to digital studies classrooms the world over, Glico’s app seems like a handy tool to introduce concepts of digital language to children at an early age.
There have been criticisms of the app, however, as there are worries that combining coding and sugary snacks will develop bad nutritional behaviours in young children.
