Learning to code isn’t as easy as snapping a photo, but Alex Klein is betting that the two are more closely connected than you might think. Klein is the co-founder of Kano (the British company that developed the cleverly designed DIY computer kit that teaches kids to code), and on a recent fall day he’s sitting in front of me with a transparent camera in his hand, showing me how to build my own photo filter.

On his laptop, Klein drags and drops a block of code using the Kano operating system, chooses a color, and presses the camera’s shutter button. The front of the camera flashes green. He does it again, this time choosing a line of code that turns the frames into a kaleidoscopic image. “This generation is so used to communicating with photography, Klein says. “They’re snapping a picture and they’re using a pre-packaged alteration made by some genius at Instagram and Snapchat. They don't really have the end to end power to manipulate the image.”

Klein has built an entire company around the idea that kids might actually like to build their own filter (or computer). When Kano launched in 2013, it was lauded for demystifying computing through its physical design. The company’s first kit consisted of a keyboard, wires, and a Raspberry Pi that connected to an external monitor. Then last year, Kano launched a screen, turning the original kit into something more akin to a full-fledged computer. Now, Kano is launching three new standalone kits—a DIY camera, speaker, and pixel board ($130 each)—that double down on the idea that physical computing is the future of computer science education.

Taken together, the three new kits turn Kano into a modular, hackable multimedia computer system. Individually, they’re perfectly rewarding standalone experiences. All three run on a single board computer that lets them connect to the technology around them via Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. They also come with USB sensors that enable them to pick up on gestures and sounds. Using the browser-based Kano OS, you can code the camera, speaker, and pixel board to perform a virtually unlimited number of commands, from creating a twinkling display that reacts to the volume in the room, to programming your camera to take a photo every morning at sunrise.

Kano

Coding can be an opaque process—it’s not always easy to understand how a line of code can translate to action. The Kano kits attempt to demystify programming by making it tangible. Mark Champkins, Kano’s head of design, says that the point of the kits is to close the loop between a piece of logic someone might have in their mind and the way it shows up in a physical object—like a camera or pixel board. “A really important learning tool is being able to hack a piece of code and see what happens to it,” he says. Besides, Klein adds, using sound, motion, and gestures, is a more engaging way to learn than asking kids to program their first 12 lines of code for an app. “What we’ve found since the beginning is when you physicalize this stuff, people get so much more interested,” he says.

Ultimately, the goal of Kano is to train a generation of kids to perceive the world as endlessly programmable. To do that, they must be fluent in how hardware and software work together. “If we’re going to create a generation that looks at computing not just as this sort of beautiful, hermetically sealed totem that obeys their every command, but as a play kit or lab for ideas, you have to build a system,” Klein says. "It can’t just exist within the confines of what's already there.”