IIT Madras Startup 'GUVI' develops 'Gaming Platform' for School Students

The Ed-tech platform GUVI, which is a startup by the students from IIT Madras has created a codified gaming platform named HackerKID which helps the student to learn coding in a game-based environment.

This initiative is the first of its kind in India. To bring this into execution, this team from IIT Madras had worked with 1,200 kids from various countries like U.S, Netherland, and India.

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The Co- founder and Chief executive officer of the startup remarks ,"HackerKID is the first product launched in India as a platform for extensive coding practice utilizing block-based programming with a game-based environment specially designed for kids”.

What does the app do? 

The students are introduced to the ‘block building programmes’ followed by which they are provided a virtual playground in which they can apply the learned materials. The ‘drag and drop’ of chunks and blocks make the learning process easy.

What makes the process more interesting is the fact that all the designs and illustrations have been produced along with the kids and hence include elements that will be more student-friendly.

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There are various challenge levels in this platform .The features of the game also allow the learner to view and share the feature points, badges and rewards to other fellow learners and enable a peer- based education.

All the features help the students in having a strong foundation of programming and computational knowledge for the students.

Key Features of the Platform

This platform is different from the normal conventions of coding learning which involves a text-based approach as it gives a better exposure towards the practical knowledge. 

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The game levels are aligned in parallel to the academic curriculum because of which the students can relate whatever they play to whatever they learn. 

Because of the virtual playground that is made available for the students, the coding becomes fun as well as easy to master. The knowledge and the application of the knowledge go hand in hand.

The beginner’s level of Turtle module is being provided free of cost for the time being.This module is designed in a way to form a strong base for the ‘International Block Coding Olympiad’ which is likely to be held very soon.

This ‘play-to-code’ technique helps the students in having a better understanding of the programming language and the flow of coding. 

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The Founder and Chief Technical officer of GUVI, Arun Prakash, says,” By practicing in HackerKID, children can understand the coding world in a better way by attaining skills such as problem-solving, creative thinking, persistence, communication and collaboration."

The team also made a mention of the efforts that were being made to involve other features related to Languages such as HTML, Javascript and CSS .They have also informed that these features will be added into the game shortly.

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