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At the IITMRP, ‘Techno Central’ was held with six game-based learning contests for children. This event included India’s most highly rated gamified educational technology companies, such as HackerKID, DIYA labs, and Time2Chess. The purpose of this collaboration was to motivate kids to learn skills such as problem-solving, cognitive thinking, creativity, and innovation through online coding challenges, robotic builds, and chess games.
In excess of 2,500 children registered for six events, comprising of a python coding competition, robotics competitions, chess tournament, quiz tournament, poster making competition, and speech competition. Participants were aged between seven and seventeen. More than 100 children earned souvenirs and rewards for their victory, showing a competitive attitude.
The schools with the most successful students were rewarded with trophies for their dedication to helping children progress through education and extra-curricular activities. Dr Ashok Jhunjhunwala, President of IIT Madras Research Park and IIT Madras Incubation Cell, opened the competition in the presence of Sunil Sethia, Executive Director of BNI Chennai. The awards were presented by esteemed guests Dr Kalaiselvan T, Former-Additional Director of CUIC-Anna University, Rajalakshmi Srinivasan, Director of Product Management at ZOHO Corp, and Chitti Babu, Chief Innovation Officer at Star Insurance.
Dr. Ashok Jhunjhunwala was impressed by the enthusiasm the kids had for the event, and mentioned that it was clear they wanted to take part in coding challenges, robotics projects, chess and other activities. He was especially drawn to the fact that GUVI understood that coding and language were two separate things, and their classes were taught in native Indian languages. Their python coding contest was meant to educate and motivate the younger generation to develop their problem-solving and cognitive thinking through the use of programming and algorithms.
HackerKID has seen great success in hosting coding competitions for kids with its interactive coding games like Turtle, Zombieland, the Webkata trilogy and the Coding Pirate, which all focus on concepts of web development with HTML, CSS, Python, JavaScript and basic coding with an algorithmic drive. Users of the HackerKID platform have been ranked on a leaderboard based on their level of participation in the games and learning activities. Those at the top of the leaderboard have been rewarded with some amazing prizes.
Praveen Kumar, Head of Business Unit of HackerKID, commented on the Techno Central events, expressing that computer science requires extensive practice to comprehend its principles. The HackerKID website provides this opportunity for school children in an entertaining way. Additionally, the cost for the service is kept low to ensure that all students, particularly those from Tier 2 and Tier 3, can benefit from this.
