Here at Kodecoon Academy, we pride ourselves in inspiring and empowering our students to spearhead meaningful innovation and become leaders and future changemakers beyond imparting digital literacy.
Every quarter of the year, our students compete with one another for a chance to be featured as one of the top coders within their cohorts or be invited to coding competitions to represent Kodecoon Academy.
Before we showcase some of the selected students’ stunning work, let us briefly share a little about the curriculum!
What is MIT App Inventor?
App Inventor is an intuitive, visual web-based application originally provided by Google, and now maintained by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for innovative minds to develop mobile applications for the first time. App Inventor utilises a block-based programming language to facilitate the creation of intricate applications to empower children to not just be consumers of technology, but to become creators of technology.
Introducing Kode It, Sparkies!
As part of our curriculum, our students are tasked with designing their very own mobile applications at the end of their course term, putting the concepts that they have learned to test with real-world applications. Our students were given the freedom to choose their problem statements to work on and develop apps that are not only creative and interactive but also able to solve a real community problem.
Are you ready to be blown away?
Faith, 15 years old, winner of Kode It, Sparkies! – App Inventor
Faith developed “Study Booster” intending to help students with bettering their study schedule management. Students, while pursuing their individual passions, be it in coding, or their extracurricular activities while studying can often result in them neglecting their school work which is detrimental to their performance in school and could possibly affect their future educational paths.
Being a student herself, Faith recognised the struggles and the importance of achieving a delicate balance between studying and having fun, leading her to create a one-stop mobile application that allows students to do just that!
Features of Study Booster
Students or productivity geeks who are looking into the Pomodoro Technique, or using various other project management tools to track their efficiency in task completion. Study Booster has a “Timer” feature that allows the user to track their study progress, allowing users to track the amount of time taken to complete their revisions. With this, students are able to see their progress over their learning journey – if they are able to complete their work more efficiently.
Next, users can utilise the “Exam Schedule” tool to set a calendar note to be notified timely on all of their upcoming test dates to better prepare for them.
The app also stars a “To Do List” for users to keep track of their daily tasks. And, by completing them, users will be rewarded with gems that they can exchange for rewards within the app ranging from candies to even bubble tea! Gamification app design ensures users stay engaged. Such rewards or achievements enables users be rewarded with a sense of achievement that further motivates them to return to the app and enjoy using it for a longer time.
Lastly, our personal favourite – a “Chat” that Faith has coded within her app as a platform for users to create a community dedicated to asking questions, sharing study tips, or just chatting with one another!
Wow! Faith outdid herself in creating such a comprehensive application that ticked off all of her goals in creating an easy-to-use and effective platform! – Well done Faith!
Caleb, 14 years old, winner of Kode It, Sparkies! – App Inventor
When Caleb learned about how games could improve one’s memory and brain performance, he couldn’t resist developing a game to do just that! After further intensive research, Caleb found out that cognitive games tend to better improve the players’ memory when played consistently, and playing for just 15 minutes a day goes a long way. Thus, “Memory Game” was born!
Features of Memory Game
As the name suggests, “Memory Game” is a fun and interactive mini-game that requires its players to work their brains to remember patterns and sequences, and to advance through the stages, players are required to reenact the sequences.
As players load into the game, they are given several options to choose from. New players can click on the instruction menu to access a pop-up on what the game is and how to play the game.
After reading through the instructions, players can access the game by clicking on “Play” and choosing their preferred difficulty level. The difficulty in levels reflects the number of squares that are part of the right sequence as well as the amount of time given to preview it.
Shortly after pressing “Start”, “Memory Game” will spawn the numbers that players are not to click on in red. The players’ objective is to click on the boxes that were not highlighted, and failure to do so results in the players losing a life in-game.
Through “Memory Game”, Caleb hopes to help his peers to improve their memory over time, and in the long run, help them build a better performance in retaining the concepts learned in school for their studies. – Great thought behind the game Caleb, we absolutely loved playing it!
Clarrie, 11 years old, winner of Kode It, Sparkies! – App Inventor
Clarrie created “Healthy Living” to educate users on the importance of leading a healthy lifestyle and how to do it. Her app features a variety of components to having a healthy lifestyle – from a healthy diet to personal hygiene and even mental wellness! Users can access the different aspects by clicking on them, and reading through important information on how to achieve them.
Hello Health Promotion Board, can we do a collaboration here?
Features of Healthy Living
“Healthy Living” features simple exercise routines that are effective and easy to do to achieve a fitter body. Users can click on the different tabs to be directed to short fitness videos that are easy to follow with exercises that can be done in the comfort of their homes such as static exercises.
Apart from showing the positive things that a user can do to achieve a healthier lifestyle, the app also showcases the negative habits that should be avoided, such as smoking. In this section, Clarrie displayed the bad impacts of what smoking does to your body through infographics and videos.
Another feature within the app is that after going through the information provided, users can then take a short quiz to demonstrate their understanding of the topics.
With her project, Clarrie desires to educate its users on the importance of having a healthy body and mind through detailed information, tips, and last but not least, what to avoid to achieve the goal. Great job Clarrie for displaying your thorough research and thought into creating such an educational mobile application.
Congratulations to all of our students who completed their App Inventor course from January to March 2022! We are so proud of you all!
After looking through all the mobile apps that our students have designed and coded by themselves, are you also inspired and want to create your very own app? Look no further, chat with us if you’re keen to try out our App Coder class!
At Kodecoon Academy, our mission is to help nurture your child to discover their strengths and encourage them to become leaders of innovation in a fast-evolving world.
Contact us to register for our FREE trial classes and meet our instructors to learn more about how you can kickstart your child’s coding journey with us! Check out a brief introduction of our trial classes here for more information!