Leicester schoolboy creates educational apps to help classmates

AN eight-year-old who taught himself how to code during the coronavirus lockdown has developed educational software for his classmates.

Akhil Akella, from Leicester, has created a number of apps and games for a variety of school topics, including addition, subtraction, times tables, country capitals and the solar system.

The Year 4 pupil, from Greystoke Primary School, also won a Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) award for his efforts. Coding is a language or instructions, made up of words and numbers which instructs the computer to behave how you want it to.

“I love coding because, coding is like magic,” Akhil told Eastern Eye. “If you know coding, you can do anything.”

Akhil first discovered coding when he attended a books exhibition at his school two years ago. He unintentionally picked a book Coding for Beginners using SCRATCH, intrigued by the cartoons on the cover page. However, it was not until the Covid-19 pandemic struck last year that he finally read the book.

“During lockdown, I was feeling very bored as there is no school, no games, no going out to parks or movies and I used to play video games for hours,” he said. “One day, I looked at my coding book and followed the block coding instructions and created my own games.”

Impressed by his skills, his father Phani enrolled Akhil in an online coding program by Byju’s Future School. He learned to create games, mobile apps, animations, and database management. He now hopes to learn concepts related to artificial intelligence, machine learning and space and satellite programming.

“All my friends and teachers liked it very much,” said Akhil. “I want to surprise my friends with new games and apps and make them happy. I think learning maths with apps makes it fun and exciting.”

Ambitions for the future

Impressed by his skills, Akhil’s headteacher nominated him for the STEM award. He competed with 12 other schools to land the prize and won. “I was super excited to win the STEM award for my school,” he said. “I felt very happy that all the time I have spent on coding, games, apps and presentations has paid off.”

Akhil’s father Phani works in tech as a software engineer. He learnt coding in his early 20s, but never considered his young son would pick it up so quickly. The father-of-two said he is incredibly proud of his son.

“It’s a huge, proud moment for us,” he said. “We are very happy and very thankful to his teachers, the school staff and the Byju coding teachers who have encouraged and supported [Akhil] to achieve this.”

Looking to the future,  Akhil wants to stay in the tech field and create his own business. He is particularly interested in road safety. After reading an article about the reasons for road accidents in the UK, Akhil has been inspired to make smart cars using his coding skills. He has made a presentation on how technology can be used to reduce UK road accidents and presented it to the England Highways department.

“I want to make all cars in the UK smart so that cars can think by themselves and there won’t be any road accidents,” said Akhil. He said his inspiration was his grandfather, a senior safety officer in the Indian railways. “I am very sure, it is possible. Making all things smart makes our life easy.”

As well as his career prospects, Akhil also has his eye on winning the STEM prize for his school next year too. The tech whizz revealed: “I am working hard for the STEM award 2022 and I wish I will win this again for my school.”