It’s time to let the coder in you come alive as the Code to Learn competition is back for its sixth edition. But, what is Code to Learn? Students from Class 5 to 12 from any school in India can register through their parents or teachers to show their coding genius on Scratch, App Inventor or AI/ML to develop fun Games, animations, story-telling or an Android app; without writing even one line of programming language code!
Artificial Intelligence is helping solve many challenging problems for the society. Google has put AI to use to solve some of the most pressing problems to society, from helping predict early blindness to giving timely updates on floods in India. We are therefore introducing a special Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Track for Class 9 - 12 students to work on Google Cloud AutoML where they use our existing Machine Learning models to create interesting applications, using a problem statement and data set of their choice. Students define a problem they want to work on, select any open dataset or create their own (Images or Text) and train a pre-trained machine learning model to create their own Machine Learning application. Students will be judged on their ability to identify problems suitable for Machine Learning and how they apply data to find a solution. We are especially excited to see how young minds use this impactful technology to solve problems around them.
Over the years, Computer Science and Programming has evolved and become one of the strongest means of solving real-life problems. Our 2018 winners have created powerful applications including an app to help dispose of electronic waste, a chat app for mental health wellness, and even a learning app that makes language learning fun.
The Code to Learn competition is a platform for students to learn the basics of coding and build a strong foundation in Computer Science. Children are exposed to technology much earlier than ever before, and we believe that these foundational years are the best time to start nurturing their scientific inquisitiveness and curiosity. Through a fun and engaging way, we aim to teach students how to use technology to solve problems around them.
In line with this objective, we have been running the Code to Learn competition for school students in India for the last 6 years. The program has also been adopted by the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India under the Rashtriya Avishkar Abhiyan.
The contest registrations are now open and students from across India can submit their projects by August 31, 2019. There are links to online tutorials for Scratch, App Inventor and Google Cloud AutoML on the contest site and are very easy to learn.
We are excited about this year's contest, and are looking forward to seeing the innovation and creativity that students will present to us via their projects.
Code to Learn is co-organized by Google Cloud, ACM India, CS Pathshala, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), IIIT Bangalore. ACM is the worldwide society for scientific and educational computing with an aim to advance Computer Science both as a science (through CS Pathshala) and as a profession. IISc and IIIT Bangalore are research-oriented universities based in Bangalore.
By Divy Thakkar, Education Program Manager, Google India