Namya Joshi fell in love with Minecraft, a video game in which players use Lego-style blocks to build anything, when she was just nine years old. In Class 5, she spent hours playing it on her parents’ phones and laptops and became fond of it.
She became so good with Minecraft that she used it to develop a tool for students to understand any subject. It’s a game-based learning tool that can be used as a substitute for text-based learning.
Now 16, Namya studies humanities along with mathematics in class 11 at university. Sat Paul Mittal School, Ludhianaand she is among MicrosoftMinecraft student ambassadors from .
“If a student finds a particular topic or concept difficult to understand, I try to create it in Minecraft in a way that makes it easy to understand,” says Namya, who offers more than 500 online modules and tutorials, including 100 Minecraft videos. .
She is also an excellent coder. “I used to learn Python and other (programming) languages during the Covid-19 pandemic and realized that I could teach what I learned to teachers and students. So I started teaching coding with Minecraft. I started a girls’ club, Girls in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics), which has over 100 members,” she adds.
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Her motto is #EachOneTeachTen, and over the past six years she has designed and delivered free coding workshops for nearly 15,000 people, including 5,530 teachers and 7,960 students, with a particular focus on girls. She also helps other students run their own coding clubs.
Beyond coding, she has raised awareness about social issues such as climate change, gender inequality, and quality education through a combination of game-based learning and STEM principles.
Namya takes inspiration from her parents, who are experts in information technology. “She is very energetic, curious and creative, and relies on reasoning. We gave her our support and knowledge, but she was the one who grabbed every opportunity,” says her mother Monica, who heads the IT department at Namya’s school. “She does a wonderful job of making learning fun,” says her proud father Kunal.
Describing Namya as a gifted student, her school principal Bhupinder Gogia says she got the opportunity to teach Minecraft to students of classes IV and V when she was 11 years old. “In a few months, she also trained teachers in our school and this opened doors for her. for her.”
As social media made Namya famous, other schools, then universities, invited her to train their students and teachers in Minecraft. “Throughout her journey, her teachers supported her with additional lessons, notes and worksheets,” says Director Gogia.
Namya’s goal is to represent India at the United Nations General Assembly and discuss social issues such as climate change. She wants to pursue studies in artificial intelligence and video games after school.
