 |
| Nandakumar, Kurumbathoor, Athavanad, Malappuram |
In 2012, for the election of student leader in various schools of Kerala, at least a few institutions used a free and open source software, ‘Sammithi’. However, little did the end-users know that the developer of the program was a higher secondary student. Now the same program is being used in thousands of schools across the State.
Nandakumar, a student of Plus Two at MSMHSS School, Kallingal Parambu, Kalpakancheri, Malappuram is the programmer who has to his credit few such programs, all free and open source.
Although he studied in an ordinary Government school, Nandakumar’s vision was always vast. Even as a student of upper primary school, he developed, ‘Chalanam’, an animation program.
Later he
developed ‘Theeram’, an offline talking dictionary of Malayalam.
Another program, ‘Gopanam’ can hide files.
Based on the request of teachers, he has developed another program,
‘Jaya Visakalanam’, which helps to easily understand the result of SSLC
exam based on district / sub district criterion. Development of a
transliteration program that makes use of English keyboard to input
Malayalam fonts called ‘Parayumpole’ is also to his credit.
In addition to the programs, he has already written two books on IT: Computer Encyclopedia and Python Programming. Even though python programming was being taught in schools, there were no books to supplement the learning. His book was the first to fill that gap. He is at present developing a game to make the learning of Malayalam language user-friendly.
17 year old Nandakumar writes articles on IT based topics. At the age of 12, he had published a book of fiction on dinosaurs. He writes articles in the magazine, ‘Open Source for You’.
Nandakumar is the son of Dr.E.Sankaran of Kottakkal Arya Vaidya Sala and Narmada, a teacher.
Courtesy: Vimal Kottakkal (text), Mathrubhumi, January 19, 2014
