SURAT: When these 30 school students of six different schools started learning coding during lockdown they did not know that by the end of the first phase of Covid-19 they will end up developing websites and applications that can assist corona warriors to fight the pandemic better. The students have developed Covid patient tracking app, a web platform for hospital management and online medical shop among many other projects.
The three and a half month coding course was designed by academicians and IT professionals to spend their lockdown period more productively. The focus was also to help students learn during the period when they are locked inside their homes. The project was offered free of cost to school students of Sharda Vidhya Mandir, Country Side, Bhulka Vihar, Sanskar Bharti, Deep Darshan and Madhavbaug.
“With a plan to make coding a fun activity and making students learn it from the basics we planned the course. I and a few of my computer expert friends were working from home during lockdown hence we planned to utilise the time by sharing knowledge,” said Jayesh Chaudhari, a graduate from IIIT Allahabad.
The course was offered to students from Class VII to IX.
“In the new education policy, the teaching of coding is included. It was not pre-planned but while pondering over some ideas we decided to run the course on a trial basis for free,” said Sanjay Desai, founder of the Country Side School.
Learning web development 12-year-old Himanshi Dayaramani has developed a website that provides Covid-19 related news and information on one platform sourced from different locations. “Since there is a lot of information and news available about Covid I planned to create a single platform where a chatbot can assist individuals to gather the information,” said Himanshi, a student of Class VII.
“My father runs a medical shop and during Covid time it is a challenging job. Keeping the idea of social distancing, lockdown and facilitating needy patients I developed the medical shop,” said 13-year-old Class VII student, Dhrovya Vithalani, who developed an online medical shop in just one week’s time.