How first-time students build real apps with Thunkable

At a glance

• Mentor: Ananda Vardhana, retired Intel engineer
• Students: 75+ middle and high schoolers in India and the United States
• Competitions: Technovation, Coolest Projects, Northwest Science Expo, Moonhack Projects
• On Thunkable since: 2022
• Before Thunkable: MIT App Inventor
• Results: Nine apps since 2022, from a dance tutor in rural India to a graded high school class project in Oregon

The challenge: Starting further back than most

Technovation asks teams to pick one of seventeen UN Sustainable Development Goals and build a working app for it. In Puttur, a rural town in Karnataka, some of Ananda’s students had never used a laptop or used a mouse, so his first lessons covered how to move a mouse, and click and drag.

Why Thunkable: Easy to start, room to grow

After one season using MIT App Inventor, Ananda switched to Thunkable, following in the footsteps of its co-founder and CEO, Arun Saigal. Technovation’s recommendation helped guide the decision, and his students were able to start building on day one.

The approach: From transistors to blocks

• Day one: Transistors, processors and C, then the same logic in blocks.
• Every session: A short recap, then straight into building.
• Every season: Pick a goal, research in the field, test with real people.

The mentor: 25 years of turning ideas into projects

Ananda’s mentoring began in 2000 with his older daughter’s science project. He has judged and mentored at the Northwest Science Expo and ISEF ever since, and after retiring from Intel in 2020 he added substitute teaching and volunteer mentoring across Oregon. The Optimist Club of Hillsboro covers his teams’ Thunkable expenses.

What students built: Apps for problems in their own community

Puttur, India, 2025–26. Ten 9th and 10th graders built six apps in one season:

• Nrithya Deepa. Village students can’t easily reach Puttur’s dance schools, so this app works as a private tutor for Bharatanatyam, linking each hand gesture and facial expression to its meaning and music. Built in under three months.
• Mudra Sangraha. Students took a five-second Kathak dance clip and let users play it on different planets, showing how gravity, atmospheric density and natural light change the movement.
• Med4U connects medicines close to expiry with people who need them.
• FrmrMrkt connects farmers directly with customers.
• Unspoken Truths is a graded riddle and quiz game for up to four players.
• Cosmic Codex is a quiz on the solar system.

Earlier teams. Ananda’s first Thunkable team built Bodhaka, which helps parents with little formal education guide their children through basic math. In Beaverton, three 6th graders built Skills"R"Us, which connects people who have a skill with customers who need it, and demoed it at a local community center.

In the classroom. At a Beaverton high school, about 60 students across two classes built a bungee operator app as a graded project: enter a jumper’s weight and height, and the app picks the right cord.

“Most of my students had never used a laptop. The internet was new, power outages were common and often only parents had a mobile phone. A few months later, they built apps connected to maps and databases, and understood the concept of AI.”

AI in the classroom: Human-led, AI-assisted

Students design and build their apps themselves in Thunkable, connecting Google Maps, Firebase, Google Sheets and Cloudinary, adding image recognition, and supporting four languages. They use ChatGPT to brainstorm, research and debug, but the design, programming and testing stay theirs.

Results: Real apps, real skills

Since 2022, more than 75 of Ananda’s students have finished a working Thunkable app, and his teams have taken their work to Technovation, Coolest Projects and the Northwest Science Expo. Students who started out unsure how to use a mouse now research problems with the people affected, then design, build and test connected apps on their own.

• 9 apps built across India and the US
• 4 languages: English, Kannada, Hindi and Tulu
• 75+ students who finished a working app

Advice: Learning first, winning second

For mentors. Keep the focus on learning. Push students to make their app as good as it can be rather than rushing to finish, and bring parents in from the start.

“The objective is to learn. The competition is just an incentive.”

For students. Understand what sits under the blocks. Start with how a computer works, then connect each block to the code it stands for.

What’s next: A new team close to home

Ananda is in the process of forming new Thunkable teams in Oregon with Minds Matter, Alternate School, Hillsboro School District and the NorthSouth Foundation this year. In Puttur, the Nrithya Deepa team’s first idea, live gesture recognition through the phone camera, is saved for a future season.

“The whole objective is to learn how to build, not just to create an app.”

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