3000 Malaysian School Children Learn Programming With LiveCode

This month, leading up the National Code Challenge in Malaysia, was extremely hectic, but extremely rewarding and I am overjoyed with the way the event went.

I am the lead trainer and content developer for the Coding@Schools program, a government funded initiative aimed at introducing primary school children in Malaysia into the world of computing and programming, to encourage them to become contributors to and creators of the Internet rather than mere consumers.

In August 2016, I guided the finalists of the Coding@Schools program in a competition called National Code Challenge (NCC). The NCC is the finale for the participants of the Coding@Schools 2016 program and the first ever national level challenge open to primary school students. 25 teams with 133 students from all over the country were placed under one roof in Putrajaya International Convention Centre (PICC). It was an overwhelming atmosphere to see young people working together to refine their projects and doing their best to make it happen. Nothing beats seeing them confidently pitch their ideas and present their prototypes built on LiveCode!

The NCC started with project submission by the participants of Coding@Schools. Approximately 1,500 students from 50 schools nationwide were trained as part of the first cohort of the Coding@Schools program from February to May 2016. We asked them to apply what they had learnt during the two workshops we ran in their schools. They were challenged to form a team and create a website or apps based on the following categories: Education, Environment, Science & Technology and Health, within one month. More than 1,000 brave souls took on this challenge and sent us 196 submissions.

My team and I loved all of them and had an awesome time reviewing every single one of the submissions. We then picked the best 25 teams to compete in the NCC and left the hard part of selecting top winners for our incredible panel of judges. They looked for a clearly defined problem, original & innovative idea, creative and functional apps and presentation skills. Needless to say, the judges were impressed by the overall quality of the finalists and totally blown away by their talent, but they have made their decisions.

Team WeDotCom from King George V Primary School, Seremban, Negeri Sembilan won over the judges with their app called “Lupa-less” (Forget-less). The app’s tagline “Just One Password and One Click, All Your Information is at Your Fingertips” encapsulates the main idea to help people remember personal information such as passwords, bank account numbers, addresses etc. They took home RM4000 and a tablet for each team member. It’s a great app and we were thrilled the judges picked it.

The event was even more special and memorable when our Prime Minister himself presented the prizes to the winners. I am sure this momentous occasion meeting the Prime Minister will be forever remembered by the participants of NCC.

As a trainer, I am very excited about introducing young students to computer programming. Instead of just playing with games and apps, students get to go behind the screen and create their own website and apps. I hope this will spark their interest and give them a foothold in the programming world.

There are many resources out there to learn how to code, but young people do need an exciting introduction to kick-start their coding journey and a special learning platform because their attention span is not lengthy. Therefore, the platform should be fun, interactive, visually engaging and easy for them to learn in.

We discovered LiveCode two years ago when we were looking for a web or mobile app prototyping tool for kids that can be deployed across all popular platforms for mobile devices, desktop and server, has an easy to use drag and drop interface for creating UI and uses English-like language to code.

Young people are digital natives where technology is central to their lives. Naturally they find material about technology interesting and thus are often intrinsically motivated to learn. They took to coding like a duck to water. Although most of them have no coding experience, as soon as they know the functions in LiveCode, like learning ABC, they straightaway build their projects. Nonetheless, it’s our role to create conditions that may be helpful for effective learning.

StartupMalaysia has a dedicated team of 35 people to run Coding@Schools across the country. These young graduates are dynamic and passionate about giving young people the opportunity to learn how to code. They make learning to code fun and interesting for young people.

It was just amazing to see how the program opens their eyes, helps them realize and makes ideas truly come alive. My team and I are in the midst of training another 1,500 students under this Coding@Schools program. We can’t wait for another batch of great ideas on the next NCC slated for November 2016.

[Editors note]: For those of you who were not lucky enough to catch Fadillah’s flash talk at the LiveCode 2016 Conference in Edinburgh, you can watch it here…