This 11-year-old is helping kids learn AI, coding: Here's how
What's the story
Coding drives innovations, but is not that easy to learn at a young age.
Kids often find it difficult to grasp the concepts of coding. The good news, though, is there is now a solution available, designed by a kid herself.
Samaira Mehta, an 11-year-old Indian American girl, has developed engaging board games that teach kids, aged between 4 and 10, how to code.
Games
Samaira strived to teach coding with a board game
Inspired to code by her father, Samaira learned the quirks of programming back in 2015.
Then, she combined those concepts with that of a board game and came up with the first game capable of teaching kids how to code.
It went on sale in 2017 and became an instant success, with over 17,000 units sold on Amazon.
Game
CoderBunnyz: Samaira's most successful creation
The proceeds from Samaira's game sales have been going to the homeless as well as for creating more games.
But, among all the games she has created, CoderBunnyz has drawn the most attention.
The board game offers a platform to learn almost all concepts of programming, starting from stack and algorithm writing to list and queue, with a playful experience.
Quote
Here's what Samaira said about the CoderBunnyz
"My board game is touching upon a very powerful technology in the current era, Coding, computer science, and AI," Samaira told YourStory. "The game teaches all the concepts used in coding and AI in a really fun, interactive, and kinesthetic way."
Other work
Other titles, workshops to push coding through fun
Samaira has also invented CoderMindz, which is a first-of-a-kind game that teaches the basic concepts of artificial intelligence.
Notably, she has taught over 2,000 kids with her games and held more than 60 workshops aimed at creating awareness about the games and pushing more and more kids to learn coding through her campaign "Yes, One Billion Kids Can Code".
Plans
What Samaira plans to do now?
Samaira has been praised by Silicon Valley leaders, even former First Lady Michelle Obama.
Now, she wants to continue this project with her family and team and make board coding games popular around the world.
Plus, the young entrepreneur also wants to focus on her education and contribute to the Girls U Code, an initiative to teach underrepresented girls how to code.