This is Tech: Kids Code to Nationals of Google Contest

Kids from Bala Vidya Mandir selected for the national finals of Google India’s Code-to-Learn competition

CHENNAI: Ten-year-old Shreya Ramkumar describes the game she has designed for a national  competition by Google India. “The user operates a cat, which needs to chase the mouse, which also moves on the screen, within 60 seconds,” she says brightly. “Programming is fun and it’s very easy!” she adds.

Shreya from Bala Vidya Mandir, Adyar, is one of the 36 finalists selected for the 2014 edition of ‘Code-to-Learn’, an all India competition, where children in three categories, from Class 5 to Class 10, develop programs using a language called ‘Scratch’ for games, stories and puzzles. The kids have been using programming with ease, and words like variables and commands are casually integrated into their vocabulary.

“I was a tech person from a very early age, and have recreated the game from the movie Tron using Scratch. It’s an arcade game, and works on both one player and two player modes,” says 16-year-old Karthi Srinivasan, another finalist from the same school. “I have tried other stuff with Scratch — like a program to draw impossible shapes, and recreated the Flappy Bird game,” he says, adding that he wants to be a cryptographer.

Scratch was developed by the MIT Media Lab to create stories, games,cartoons and various other kinds of projects. An open source software that is free for all, it uses a drag-and-drop technique, and was specially designed for educational purposes.

Code-to-learn began in 2013 to build a stronger foundation for computer science in India, and with the large number of tech-crazy kids in the city, 12 of the finalists are from Chennai, from schools including DAV Public School, Maharshi Vidya Mandir and Sishya. The competition sees huge participation, with around 250 entries from the seven schools of the Bala Vidya Mandir group  itself, in three categories from Classes 5 to 10.