Credit: Special Arrangement
A former professor from Bengaluru has launched a website to teach basic coding to non-English speakers for free. The website is called Klaritree.
Currently, coding and programming courses on the website are available in eight Indian languages — Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Hindi, Gujarati, Sanskrit, and Marathi — plus English. “Even a student as young as 10 years or an adult with no prior knowledge of coding can use it,” Mahadevaiah, the brain behind Klaritree, says.
His goal is to empower children in rural areas to enter the field of engineering with confidence. “While working at a government engineering college, I saw innumerable students who would struggle with the basics of programming because of the language barrier. I could empathise with them because I studied in Kannada medium until Class 10. Learning everything in English after that felt like hell,” he tells Metrolife. He has been a mechanical engineering professor for over 30 years.
While the module in basic coding is meant for students in Class 5 and above, programming modules like ‘Turtle’ are designed for Class 5 to Class 7 students and ‘Graphic’ for students in Class 10 and above. All the modules come with theoretical lessons and practical exercises. “They use low-code technology, which is hailed as the ‘future of programming’ by experts. These are available on the website free of cost,” he adds.
Shortly, they will roll out a module to learn how to write high-end graphics in Kannada for a nominal fee.
The larger vision for Mahadevaiah and his team is to create more “thinkers and problem solvers” in society. “This is important for the future. Since the advent of artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT, people are beginning to lose touch with basic thinking skills,”
he explains. His team has also conducted workshops and webinars in Dharwad and Mysuru in collaboration with NGOs. “At these workshops, students from multiple educational institutions came over. We taught them the fundamentals of coding.” The team is open to conducting such workshops in other cities if local education institutions express their interest.
Mahadevaiah launched Klaritree in July 2023. Prior to that, he has written two books on coding in Kannada, namely ‘Vruthipara Computer Saksharathe’ and ‘Raspberry Pie’. He also puts out educational videos on his YouTube channel, ‘MD’s OpenClass’.
For details, visit klaritree.com