There are a plethora of applications on the market that promise to teach students how to code or at the very least introduce them to the fundamentals of coding. A new app called "The Everything Machine" recently caught the attention of online tech outlets such as Wired.

Raul Gutierrez created the app—the idea came from his son who discovered the versatility of a cell phone. Gutierrez wanted to teach children how the device they use on a regular basis works and the wide array of uses it has.

“Everything Machine breaks down a phone’s components—camera, microphone, display, and so forth—into friendly illustrations,” according to Wired.

“Using a basic visual programming language, these components can be dragged and dropped and mixed and matched to create new machines. A facial recognition camera that takes a picture when exposed to light. Or a motion detector that triggers a sound recording when someone enters the room.”

The report states that the Everything Machine allows children to drop the controls or components that they want their application to have. Gutierrez told Wired that one student was able to code a motion-detection machine within the application. The student set up his mobile phone so as a student walks into the classroom the phones camera captures them.

“Programming is essentially stringing together these parts of a machine,” he says, according to the report.

“The app teaches the principles of very simple logic gates. ‘So if you have something coming in on one side and something coming in on the other side and both are turned on, the signal will go through the gate,’” he continued in his statement.

“That’s normally not taught until high school.”

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Article by Navindra Persaud, Education World Contributor