Two class 5 students from Mumbai win MIT Hackathon Award 2020 for app on Climate Change
Ayush Sankaran and Jashith Narang, bagged the first and fourth place in the 'people's choice' and 'judge’s choice' categories respectively, for developing an app on climate change titled ‘Climate Catastrophe – Earth in Dearth.
Two class five students from Mumbai made the country proud by winning accolades at the App Inventor Hackathon 2020 held by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US between July 12 and 19.
The duo who developed an app on climate change titled ‘Climate Catastrophe – Earth in Dearth’ bagged the first and fourth place in the 'people's choice' and 'judge’s choice' categories respectively, among 300 participants across the world, The Logical Indian reported.
Jashith Narang and Ayush Sankaran.
Image credits: The Better India
With all the schools shut due to the coronavirus pandemic, both the boys utilised their time productively to bring to light the ill-effects of climate change and global warming through a mobile application.
While 10-year-old Ayush Sankaran, is pursuing his education from Billabong High International School (BHIS) in Malad, nine-year-old Jashith Narang, is studying at Bombay Scottish School in Powai.
“I am very glad to have won the award. When we started, we never expected to win – we just worked on the project because we had fun while making it. It was a great surprise that our app topped the people’s choice category and came fourth in the judges’ category. It was a pleasant surprise for us and is huge great motivation to do more coding,” Ayush Sankaran told India Education Dairy.
As part of the competition, the students were given an option to choose from a wide range of global issues like climate change, better resource allocation, health care, learning and working remotely, poverty eradication, living together, social and racial justice, and social impact of artificial intelligence. However, Ayush and Jashith decided to build an app surrounding climate change after drawing inspiration from the young Swedish environmental activist, Greta Thunberg.
The duo successfully went on to create an app in a span of just one week and with three segments – learn, test, and play. In the learn section, children could attempt a quiz on climate change and also learn about climate fighters in the real world. In the test section, they were given the opportunity to answer a few multiple choice questions on climate change and also calculate their carbon footprint based on their daily lifestyle. The third section contained two games – one on deforestation and the other on renewable sources of energy.
Dr Madhu Singh, Principal of BHIS praised the students and said,
“We are very proud of Ayush's achievement. He has won three different awards for different apps in this pandemic, and has proven nothing is impossible by constantly innovating and building new inventions even during the lockdown.
(Edited by Rekha Balakrishnan)
Edited by Rekha Balakrishnan