Like every curious 4 years old who has figured out how to navigate a smartphone to a favourite app, Basil Okpara Jr was the same. At the age of 4, his father bought him a tablet to play games with. His favourite games were Candy Crush, Subway Surfer and Temple Run, not surprising for an adventurous soul right?
By the time he was 7 years old, he had spent so much time playing games such that it was no longer fascinating to his parents but a little disturbing. One fateful day, he had spent so much time playing games without getting his other works done that his father lashed out at him in anger and told him:
Instead of playing all these games, why don’t you build your own so that other kids can play.
-Basil Okpara Snr
These were the exact words that fired Basil Jr up and he began showing interest in creating a game he could play and have other kids play too.
Seeing his seriousness, his father got him a laptop to make his own games and register him to learn the first steps in doing that. In March, his father signed him up for a five-day boot camp organized by Codefest International, which was organised to create an awareness of emerging technologies like robotics, Internet of Things (IoT), computer programming and virtual reality for children aged 5 to 15. It was at this boot camp Basil learned to code with Scratch 2.
Basil uses a free programming application called Scratch, used to create games, animations, and interactive stories online or offline, to build his own hide and seek games. So far, Basil has used it to generate more than 30 mobile games and just currently designed a bat game that is programmed to hide while the player looks for it. While many view game building as a serious work or job description, young Basil sees it as a hobby to entertain himself whenever he is bored.
Basil dreams of being a scientist, but in the meanwhile, he keeps building different games and will have one of his games – Frog Attack on Google Play Store this August (Watch out!). The games are still in their raw form and can currently only be accessed on computers that have Scratch 2 installed.
Many Nigerian and even African children have gained publicity with the different innovative designs they have come up with. Recently, two Nigerian 12-year-olds were recently celebrated for using codes to build robots to sort out their house chores. Another Nigerian teenager was celebrated for creating a robot to fold tee-shirts and she is currently improving the design to handle other types of clothing.
The world is digital and children are not left behind in having their own impact in the digital world. Greater exposure of African children to emerging technologies and the fusing of innovative labs in the educational sector will go a long way in preparing them for the changing world and able to relate and compete with their peers in another developed country.
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Source
Technopreneur
Scratch
CNN
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