Coding Lab’s annual International Coding Showcase (ICS) is a collaboration with Coding Lab Japan, designed to provide a platform for our students aged 7 to 18 to present their remarkable coding projects. Our students get the opportunity to showcase their own exceptional projects, done in Scratch, App Inventor or Python, and share their brilliance with a global audience. This not only helps our budding coders gain confidence, but also paves the way for them to build a robust coding portfolio, preparing them early for a successful future in today’s digital age. The resounding success of ICS 2022 transcended borders as we proudly featured Coding Lab students from all over the world, from Singapore and Japan to Germany, Indonesia and the United States!

Our students take pride in their solid coding foundation and enriched knowledge gained from our MIT-inspired coding classes. They have poured their hearts and souls into their projects, and their extraordinary submissions left an indelible impression on our esteemed panel of judges! We proudly present an exclusive blog feature highlighting the achievements of our top Distinction winners from ICS 2022. These students not only secured the prestigious top award, but also gained the opportunity to have their superb work featured on our very own Coding Lab YouTube channel, captivating the attention of viewers from all across the globe!

Nakamura Shinji

9 years old, Singapore

Distinction, Young Computer Scientists (Ages 7-9)

Hobbies: I spend a lot of time on coding. If I have more free time, I read comics and non-fiction books about coding.

How did you start coding? My kindergarten offered a robotics lesson. The robotics teacher told my parents that I was exceptionally good because I came up with the best robotics solutions without any guidance from him. My mother then signed me up for free lessons from Smart Nation’s website, where we got to know about Coding Lab. I was extremely keen to learn more about coding, so my mother signed me up for more lessons at Coding Lab!

Why did you join ICS 2022? I wanted to compete with other contestants from Japan and showcase my projects on an international level!

What’s your biggest takeaway from ICS 2022? My ICS project is about a game that takes 5 days to finish. I created this simple game because my younger brother wanted to play computer games, but most games were too difficult for him. This game only requires three keys from the keyboard to play. Through this experience, I also learnt how to edit a video for my presentation, which was very fun. Maybe I can become a YouTuber one day!

What do your family and friends say when they hear that you are a coder? My grandmother is very proud of me. She tells her friends that I won awards for coding. I would like to thank her for the full support that she has given me!

Future coding aspirations: I am planning to create an advanced game that no one can replicate. I am looking forward to mastering other programming languages too!

Any comments for the readers? Follow me on Scratch and look out for my new projects!

Aang Winston Angkasa

11 years old, Singapore

Distinction and Judges’ Choice (Most Creative) Award, Advanced Computer Scientists (Ages 10-12)

Hobbies: I enjoy reading books.

How did you start coding? I attended a class conducted by Coding Lab in 2017 when I was just 6 years old.

Why did you join ICS 2022? I wanted to challenge myself to step out of my comfort zone and put what I had learnt to the test.

What’s your biggest takeaway from ICS 2022? Coming across many python functions I did not know of previously, such as “webbrowser”, during my research. I added these new functions I had learnt into my project!

What do your family and friends say when they hear that you are a coder? My family members are very supportive and always encourage me to pursue my dream to be a coder!

Future coding aspirations: I want to be a programmer so I can make a simpler programming language that would help other programmers save time when writing their code!

Linus Lim Jiarui

14 years old, Singapore

Distinction and Judges’ Choice (Best Presentation) Award, Python (Ages 13-18)

Hobbies: I code, play some computer games and musical instruments.

How did you start coding? Initially, I applied for my school’s infocomm club but got rejected. Instead of giving up, I researched other ways to explore my area of interest and my passion for coding developed from there.

Why did you join ICS 2022? I wanted people to see what I can create with my coding skills and knowledge.

What’s your biggest takeaway from ICS 2022? Filming the presentation video was a new and interesting experience. It was fun making projects related to my areas of interest!

What is your favourite thing about coding and Coding Lab? I like the teachers who are always there to guide me and answer any questions I have.

Future coding aspirations: I want to improve on and optimise my current code while learning more about different topics. In the future, I would like to work in an exciting field in a job related to coding!

Any comments for the readers? The internet is a great place to learn coding. As long as you start somewhere, you are bound to do great things!

This concludes our 2022 International Coding Showcase (ICS)! Don’t miss the chance to check out our full list of winners here or view the playlist of videos of our top Distinction and Judges’ Choices submissions.

The Coding Lab team would like to extend an immense THANK YOU to all our talented students who participated in this event. We appreciate the tremendous effort each and every one of you have dedicated to your projects! Congratulations to all our students for their outstanding achievements, and we look forward to seeing what other innovative projects they will come up with in future! Let us keep the flame of coding alive as we continue to hone our coding skills!

Keep a lookout for our International Coding Showcase 2023, coming soon! Brace yourselves for yet another awe-inspiring showcase of coding excellence!

Read all about the winners of our International Coding Showcase (SG-JP) 2021 here!

P.S. Our International Coding Showcase is only open to Coding Lab students. Interested in our award-winning coding classes? Check them out here.

(Written by Zixin and edited by Thinzar)