While he is at the laptop, Levi Israel is oblivious to the world around him. In his defence, Levi creates animation, does coding and even carries out testing.
Levi Israel has developed a Corona-related app; (below) Farhaan Hussain with his touchless sanitiser. Photos: Special Arrangement
Levi’s parents view his obsessive interest in information technology with mixed feelings. They are worried that for his age, Levi spends too much time on the screen; and at the same time, they are proud of him for showing initiative in picking up tech skills.
Levi, a resident of Chennai, is just eleven years old.
His usually-doting mother, Devamani, admits to snapping at him recently, “when he told me about a coding challenge he was preparing for and not to disturb him for four days.”
Needless to say, Levi has had his way.
The boy has come up with something that is extremely relevant to the times, and also useful. He calls his work — “Corona Fighter App User Guide”, as it lists hospitals and grocery stores nearby, provides information on live corona cases and a to-do list before stepping out among other things.
His favourites in this bouquet of resources: Two simple games that seek to create awareness about the pandemic.
“I love to play games online,” he explains with an infectious energy. “In one game, Virus Game, the user has to reach the top dodging all the coronavirus en route,” explains Levi. “In another game, Virus Treaty, the player has to treat a patient lying on bed before the timer turns zero.”
The extended vacation due to the COVID-19 outbreak is seeing many children honing their coding and robotics skills, and some of them are entering challenges.
Levi, for instance, has submitted the app to Covid Project Challenge organised by SP Robotic Works.
Of the 500 children from pan-India who have submitted their projects online so far (the challenge ends on May 17), close to 100 are from Chennai.
Farhaan Hussain is a sixth grader who has applied his robotic skills to creating a hack that would enable people to wash their hands with a great degree of safety.
His “touchless sanitizer” works with a battery powered pump and an IR sensor. The sensor detects the hands when brought near the sanitiser and triggers the pump to release the sanitizer liquid.
“The hand sanitiser is touched by many people, multiple times, in a home setting and outside, and when I thought about this, this idea came to me,” says Farhaan, who has a YouTube page by the name #farhaancreativity where he showcases all his creations.
Farhaan has signed up for the Maker Challenge series organised by WitBlox and the touchless sanitiser is part of the event.
He is now working on making a face mask with whatever is available at home, again as part of another challenge.
“He learnt the basics of robotics from a camp after which he has been taking up projects on his own, learning how to go about it by watching online tutorials,” says Mubeen, Farhaan’s mother.
Providing a platform
Startups like Code Vidhya, WhiteHat Jr and Camp K12 are among those equipping children with the technology skills necessary to solve real-life problems. They say once children understand and learn the concepts, they can come up with their own ideas.
Building games and apps is not the only reason children are being nudged into computer programming. Coding offers a chance to improve cognitive skills and develop computational thinking.
“From seven to 15, it’s the right age to develop their logical thinking,” says Sneha Priya, co-founder, SP Robotic Works.
She says it is important that these children get a platform to scale up their ideas and challenges provide them such a kind of an opportunity.
Says Sneha, “We host such challenges continually — before Diwali and Christmas — for children to come up with new solutions. Some projects are selected and promoted to the execution stage. Some years ago, Swachh Bot project by our students was used to clean the Besant Nagar beach. A robot for agriculture weeding is also in use now.”
