The fourteen-year-old girl Namya Joshi based in Ludhiana (Punjab) who turned the gaming software Minecraft into a useful educational tool. She’s teaching not only students but also educators worldwide, impressed the Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and got much more in her little hands. Let’s look at her journey of using technology for making learning and teaching interesting!
It all started when she found Minecraft by accident while working on her school project. “I thought Minecraft is just used for playing but knew it can be used in education after exploring the Education edition of Minecraft.”
“Reading the lesson through the books is quite boring for a child but learning it visually makes the subject interesting and also helps the child in learning it in a better way,” says Namya on visual learning and how it has helped her too. She started creating lessons in Minecraft and realized how it is so fun and engaging to create lessons as well as explaining to others.
She goes on, “Students can actually create lessons in Minecraft, know more about how everything works, try experimenting with different things, turn on their creative mode, and can have fun by doing all these!”. She says that looking at a pictorial representation is better than reading a whole page in the book and how it’s so easy for students to understand it and for teachers to teach it.
Namya says that she’s proud of herself as a fourteen-year-old girl for her achievements, “I have trained more than a hundred teachers not only in my school but also in my region on how to use Minecraft for education. I have conducted various Skype sessions in many countries like Vietnam, Hungary, Finland, and much more.” When being asked a question about her experience of training teachers in and around the world, she goes on “I got to learn how to be kind and teach others by understanding the other person’s space and the way the child learns because the way everyone learns differently. It’s been a learning experience for me, I shared whatever I’ve understood.”
When being asked the question of all the parents concerned about their children’s mental health when they play games, here’s how Namya answered at lightning speed: “Playing games isn’t bad, actually it improves the sharpness and creative thinking of a child. But everything has its own negative aspects, playing for a long time and all day can affect the child. And the best thing I could say is to complete all the tasks and then enter the playing-zone.”
The little Minecraft wizard who impressed the CEO of Microsoft Satya Nadella says that it’s a very inspirational experience for her and that she got to learn so many new things. Meeting the CEO was totally a big blow, she got so excited when she was caught up by the CEO. Being a girl gamer, Namya got discriminated against and questioned like ‘Why is a girl into these things?’ ‘Why are you playing games? It’s for boys.’ But never lost hope and whenever she does, she says that she believes in the Japanese proverb “Fall down seven times, stand up eight.” and keeps fighting for what she wants.
Namya was also awarded the Bal-Shakti puraskar on 25th January 2021 in the innovation category. Here’s how she says about her experience, “I feel blessed and honored to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi. I was on a high cloud the day I was awarded, and seeing my name in the worthy tweet of our honorable prime minister.”
As an aspirant of making learning fun, Namya says that one of her future plans is to set up an education gaming platform making gamified education content. And had also started the ‘Each one Teach ten’ club as she firmly believes that each one educated person can teach ten and ten can teach others. And no one would be left uneducated in this world. Namya’s motto is to eradicate illiteracy and to make learning fun as she believes that technology can be incorporated into learning to make it both fun and appealing.
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