www.indiatoday.in/education

An eight-year-old boy has created an app, DYSXA App, which aims to assist dyslexic kids in their learning process.

Dyslexia is one of the most common learning disabilities prevalent in children. As per the report by Dyslexia Assessment for Languages of India (DALI) and Ministry of Health & Science, 1 in 6 children has reading problems, and there are nearly 3.5 crore children with dyslexia studying in schools in India.

The disability makes it difficult for children to learn in a regular classroom setting. To tackle this situation, 8-year-old Souradeep Sarkar from Burdwan has created the DYSXA app, which is a learning aid app for dyslexic kids that enables them to learn alphabets and numbers. Dyslexia has a biological basis and occurs because of differences in brain wiring

Impact of Dyslexia in India

Our country doesn’t have standardized and validated assessment tools to diagnose the symptoms in kids. While learning to code on the WhiteHat Jr platform, Souradeep got inspired by his father, who encouraged him to create an app to help dyslexic kids in their learning process.

Once logged in, the app aids in learning, forming words, has an animation for words like birds, pictures of objects, etc., and pronounces the word to help kids learn the pronunciation of the word fed in the app.

The app also has a separate colour and sound for every letter, and quizzes to help kids practice and identify the correct word or spellings.

Minds behind these innovations

“In today’s time, kids are very aware of societal issues and want to contribute in their own way to address them. Teaching kids to code not only provides a well-structured way to introduce them to rational thinking and problem-solving skills, but also improves their logical and analytical thinking, and increases creativity and concentration. Kids as young as 6-year-old can start to learn coding to prepare them for the future.

We are witnessing many young kids like Souradeep creating some extremely creative, high utility digital applications that will make a lasting impact on the world,” said Karan Bajaj, Founder and CEO, WhiteHat Jr.

Anti-bullying app

Another example is of 9-year-old Mae Mae from Shillong, who has created the Anti-Bullying app for kids to report bullies anonymously and alert their parents, teachers, and friends about them.

Mae Mae and her sister had faced bullying at school, and she wanted to put an end to this.

While learning to code on the WhiteHat Jr platform, Mae Mae thought of using her learning to create an app to help other kids cope with bullies.

Once logged in, the child can anonymously share details of the incident including the name of the bully and give a detailed explanation on how they were mistreated.

This will notify their parents and teachers and encourage them to take necessary disciplinary action to nip the problem in the bud.

Light Bag app

A 16-year-old boy, Jishnu Baruah, from Dibrugarh, Assam has created the Light Bag app which allows kids to shed off load from their school bags. While going to school, he saw kids struggle with carrying heavy bags to school every day and got the idea to create the app.

With the help of WhiteHat Jr., he made the app which allows teachers to update the name of the books and notebooks they want the student to carry on a specific day.

The app provides an estimate of the weight in the student’s bag and shows animations to the teachers to convey the student’s discomfort depending on the weight of the bag. Based on the weight calculations, teachers can reduce the number of books so that students can carry a lighter bag to school.

How this company is teaching kids to code

All these kids are learning to code on WhiteHat Jr, an EdTech startup that teaches coding to kids between 6 to 14 years of age. Teaching cutting-edge curriculum on technologies like AI, robotics, machine learning and space tech, the startup aims to harness natural creativity of kids and shift their mindset from being consumers to creators at an early age.

After seeing great success for its online platform, the company is working to bring its AI and robotics coding curriculum to schools across the country.

The inception

It has started a programme where top 1 percent of kids on the platform will have a chance to get an all-expense-paid trip along with one of their parents to Silicon Valley in the USA to be mentored by top entrepreneurs and venture capitalists.

They are also soon starting a 15-under-15 fellowship wherein WhiteHat Jr will help the top 15 kids on the platform incubate their own startups and provide a 15000 dollar fellowship to them.