Eleven-year-old S. Karthik Muthuvel wanted to do something productive during the summer holidays. He attended the robotic summer camp conducted by Indian Robotics League for a week at his school, Bala Vidya Mandir in Adyar. There he learnt how to make gaming apps and ended up using it for creating his own games. “I love playing games and when my father saw me spending so much time on the computers and phones, he suggested that I create games of my own. I created games like space invaders, painting apps,” says Karthik, a Class VI student. The world of apps was fun and his next idea was to create an app for the FIFA World Cup. “My father suggested that I create something that will be beneficial for others too. I then decided to work on a calendar that will be useful to the school. I created an app called ‘bvmcal’ that has month-by-month listings of the happenings of the school. It includes the dates of the school programmes, PTA meetings and examination schedules. After thoroughly scrutinising the app, the school appreciated my work,” says Karthik, adding he wouldn’t have been able to achieve all this without the support of his school. Karthik, who wants to create something like Google one day, is now working on another app for the school. “I am creating a time-table app that will show everyday classroom timings in their mobile itself,” says Karthik, a Bill Gates fan.
