Pranay Loves the Tynker Community!

Meet Pranay, an ambitious 11-year-old from Pennsylvania! When he’s not busy succeeding in his 6th grade classroom (he won the Presidential and Principal’s gold medals last year), he’s reading or playing video games – his favorite book is The Clay Marble! Pranay also enjoys coin collecting and plans on acquiring one coin from every year since 1980. He only needs 2 or 3 more!

Thanks to his love of both reading and STEM, Pranay is very well-rounded. According to his mom, “He’s a really good reader – he reads really good books,” but his favorite subject in school is math or science. Why? “I feel like for math there’s always only one answer. There are multiple ways to get there, but there’s always going to be one answer. In science it’s a little foggy, because something could happen and then a different thing could happen too if you do the same things.”

Pranay first discovered Tynker with his friend when the app was installed on his school’s iPads, and he built his coding knowledge from there with the help of a STEAM class! He even has two friends who have also been featured – Asher and Zunair! They love to code together and learn from each other. In Pranay’s words, “two brains are better than one!”

Pranay is particularly motivated by the Tynker community. As he told us, “I like to make games, and I like that people actually like my games! That makes me want to make more.” He’s grown a lot as a programmer since starting coding with Tynker – after a year of programming, he’s able to use variables and broadcasting; he said that his coding skills have gone from “simple to complex.” We had the chance to ask Pranay a few questions about his experience coding with Tynker!

How did you get introduced to Tynker? We had Hour of Code in 4th grade, but I really got into it in 5th grade! We got school iPads and Tynker was on it. At the start of the year, me and my two other friends Asher and Zunair who have also been interviewed, coded a lot together because we’re in the same class! Sometimes we would stay in at recess to do coding. We’d help each other – like Asher taught me how to broadcast and I showed him some stuff.

How did you learn how to use Tynker when you were first starting out? We had STEAM class and we learned Tynker there! It was going a little too slow for me because Asher and I had already tried Tynker before that. I think my first featured game was around our first or second STEAM class. Asher’s came a few weeks after.

How did you feel when you found out your project had been featured? I was excited! I was even more excited because Zunair was showing off because he got his project featured and then I got my project featured too!

Where do you get the idea for Junk Food Eating? There are a lot of clicker games. My first clicker game was for eating, so I decided to make one about junk food for my second one and about ice cream for my third one.

How do you get inspiration for your projects? We learned about costumes in our STEAM class and I wanted to try that out!

What is your favorite way to use code? I really like the variables and broadcasting. I feel like most of my games are based on that. I feel like it’s complex but once you get how it goes it’s easy to learn!

What do you do with a project when you’re done with it? Sometimes I show it to my friends, sometimes I just publish it. While it’s in review I go over it and check if anything’s wrong. Usually after the game is out I’ll add some stuff. Junk Food Eating only had food at first, but I added a top hat and sunglasses. For Fruit Eating, first I just had fruits and you could switch between them, and then I improved it so you had to click use fruit coins to get new fruits – you couldn’t just get them for free. Usually after it’s out I improve it and when I feel like it’s the best it can be I make a second game or a third game.

What is your favorite project you’ve made so far? I think my second one, Junk Food Eating, was my favorite one.

What are you planning to make next? I have a game that I’m making right now called Fitbit Fitness! When you tap it, it goes forward, so every step goes to getting new Fitbits so you can get more dollars per step. I never did this before but I made it so when it goes to the end of the screen it’ll go back to the start of the screen and change the background to a different time of day. I think the only hard part was figuring out where I had to make the coordinates, where he would stop and come back from the right side of the screen and when it would change. Other than that I think it’s fine. It was pretty self-explanatory.

What’s your favorite thing you can do in Tynker? I like the community because you can get inspiration from it but you can also just play games just to have fun! I like that you can remix games! Usually when I remix a game I don’t publish it or if I do I give credit. It’s fun to remix it because with some games I wouldn’t be good enough to make it on my own, but I feel like I can improve on the code – I can add a score or something!

How do you think learning coding has prepared you for the future? The world now is really dependent on computers now more than ever. Even if it’s not related to technology it’s still related to computers in some way!

Do you think other kids should try coding? Yeah, it’s really fun and it might seem frustrating at first but once you learn a little you can code with your friends! That was really fun for me – you can help each other out, like if you don’t know how to do something they might know!

Pranay’s mom Padmaja is very proud of his success with Tynker! We were thrilled to hear that “He loves Tynker a lot!” Padmaja told us that Pranay’s dad is in IT so he used to ask him coding questions, but now, Tynker is something Pranay has taken on entirely on his own. In fact, his mom told us that “after first grade he said ‘Mom, I don’t want any help. I’ll do it by myself,’” and he has been doing his homework on his own ever since!

When asked what benefits coding with Tynker has for Pranay, Padmaja touched on productivity and concentration, saying, “he is using his time for a good thing! He’s not watching any videos; he is improving his knowledge by learning coding.” She continued, “I feel that his concentration levels improved a lot with coding.” She continued on the benefits of concentration, saying, “You can’t do anything without concentration; if he does something that he likes, his concentration is more. If he’s reading a book and he likes the book, he just wants to read it – he won’t want to go anywhere. I saw that concentration in coding. He loves doing this more than anything else.”

But the benefits coding brings to Pranay don’t stop there! He also thrives in the Tynker community. According to his mom, “He is motivated when he gets more likes – he wants to do more and more. Every time he gets more likes he’ll say, ‘Mom! Today I have so many likes,’ and he’s so happy.”

Thanks for chatting with us, Pranay and Padmaja! It was great to learn more about Pranay and hear about the positive effect the Tynker community has on him. Keep coding – we can’t wait to see what awesome projects you dream up next!