CHENNAI : IIT Madras Research Park (IITMRP) hosted ‘Techno Central’ in which six gamified learning competitions were held for children. The event was collaborated by India’s top-rated gamified EdTech platforms including HackerKID, DIYA labs, &Time2Chess.

The collaboration of HackerKID, DIYA labs, and Time2Chess was aimed to encourage kids to learn and gain essential skills such as problem-solving, cognitive thinking, creativity and innovation through online coding games, making robotic projects, and chess.

More than 2,500 kids registered for these six competitions which included a python coding competition, robotics contests, a chess competition, a quiz competition, and poster making contest besides a speech contest. The Python coding contest was supported by the HackerKID website powered by GUVI, an IIT Madras & IIM-Ahmedabad incubated EdTech company. HackerKID is India’s first gamified coding & learning environment for kids

Dr. Ashok Jhunjhunwala, President, IIT Madras Research Park and IIT Madras Incubation Cell inaugurated the contest in the presence of Mr. Sunil Sethia, Executive Director of BNI Chennai. The prizes were distributed by guests of honour Dr. Kalaiselvan T., Former-Additional Director of CUIC-Anna University, Ms. Rajalakshmi Srinivasan, Director of Product Management at ZOHO Corp, and Mr. Chitti Babu, Chief Innovation Officer, Star Insurance.

Witnessing the energy among kids in the event, Dr. Ashok Jhunjhunwala, President, IIT Madras Research Park and IIT Madras Incubation Cell, said, “I can see that children present here wanting to play coding challenges, make robot projects, win over chess or enjoy any such activities that are meant for them… The biggest part of GUVI that attracted me was they understood that programming and language were two different things. GUVI brought out coding classes in vernacular Indian languages and they teach programming in these languages.”

Kids between the ages seven to seventeen took part in these contests that were focused on bringing out their creativity and innovation. Over 100 children received gifts and prizes for winning and leading ahead of other kids in the competitions with a competing spirit. Among the schools that participated, the schools with the maximum number of winning students have been awarded trophies for being supportive of kids in learning through games and co-curricular activities.

Speaking about this event, Mr. Arun Prakash M., Founder and CEO of GUVI, said, “It is great to see young kids competing to solve the game problems and happily learning through these fun challenges. I am amazed to see the kids coding with high energy levels. We are glad that techno-central events served their purpose.”

The Python coding contest aims to inspire and educate the next generation with programming skills that further develop problem-solving and cognitive thinking through interactive coding games through programming and its algorithmic approach.

HackerKID website has been successful in executing the coding contest among kids with its interactive coding games like Turtle, Zombieland, Webkata trilogy and Coding pirate, which focused on web development concepts with HTML, CSS, Python JavaScript & basic coding with an algorithmic approach. Existing users of HackerKID were ranked on its leaderboard for their active gaming & learning on HackerKID platform. These top kids were also awarded exciting prizes.

Complementing the Techno Central events, Mr Praveen Kumar, Head of Business Unit, HackerKID, said, “Computer Science is a subject unlike any other subject, it needs a lot of practice to better understand its concepts. HackerKID site aims to deliver this for school kids in a gamified approach. We have managed to keep the subscription of the product very affordable so that Tier 2 and Tier 3 students also benefit from this.”

Here’s the link to introduce coding to kids of age 7 to 17 – http://www.hackerkid.org/ The innovation and intelligence of kids were challenged by robotic contests & chess competitions supported by DIYA robotics labs & Time2Chess respectively.