A Great Initiative to Teach App inventor in Bangla By Niloy Shuvo

This is a guest blog by Anisul Haque

SHIKKHOK.COM, a well known platform for teaching in the Bengali language, won a 2013 Google Rise Award, 2013 The Bobs user award, ISIF Award and so on. SHIKKHOK means Teacher in English. For 3 years this website has provided important lessons on various important topics. Ragib Hasan, Assistant Professor of Computer Security, University of Alabama at Birmingham, started this platform, shikkhok.com. Now this platform is very popular in Bangladesh and West Bengal, India.

A year ago a medical student, Niloy Sharma Shuvo, started a course on App Inventor to increase interest in young people about programming and making apps that will help in their workplace, school and college. The people of Bangladesh and West Bengal, India have many ideas, but many of them have no idea how to build app, or how to put their idea into action.

This course has 11 lectures based on a good syllabus. This is the first initiative on App Inventor for Bengali speaking people. About 1500 students registered for the course. They are interested in making apps with their own ideas. This course planted an interest in programming and increased problem solving skills in students in schools, colleges, and also universities.
Using quality video tutorials, the teacher of this course, Niloy Sharma Shuvo, introduced MIT App Inventor to the students.

This course centers on real projects and there are some lectures/tutorials on making mini games. Teenagers are attracted by this option. Many young people build games and upload them to the Google Play store.

There are very basic examples of how App Inventor visual components work, along with downloadable App Inventor real project files. This initiative helped many young people to develop their own apps. After the course, he also helped students with their own projects, or explained the function of components by email.

The impact of this online course on Bangladesh is noticeable. Some students have shared their story of winning science fairs, and many competed in national competitions by making apps with App Inventor.

One student who is studying in Dhaka University said " Now I can make my own apps though I don't have a little knowledge of programming. I'm not a CSE student but I made an app 'Class Note' where I can save my lecture notes. The course on shikkhok.com about App Inventor guided me to build my app with my own idea."