MOCHII BALL: Basic Algorithm Learning Language

The demand for coding skills is on the rise - growing 50% faster than the overall job market. According to the Philippine Statistics Authority, the digital economy made up $36.5 billion (9.4%) of our country's Gross Domestic Product in 2022, marking an 11% increase from the $33 billion recorded in 2021. The Philippine Government recognizes the importance of enhancing digital skills for a future-ready workforce, as postulated in the Philippine Digital Workforce Competitiveness Act.

Many Filipino students, however, are unequipped to handle the digital transformation. Although 97% of Filipino students want to learn more about coding, and 96% wish it would become a core subject in their schools, the Philippines spends the least on coding education compared to its neighboring countries Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia. The Philippines is lagging behind - which comes as no surprise when, based on a 2021 report by the Philippine Department of Education, the ratio of computers to learners is as low as 1:19 for public elementary schoolers, and only an average of 67% of public schools have access to the Internet. 

Considering the additional cost of purchasing, maintaining, and powering computers, it is difficult to imagine how the country might bridge the digital divide for the nearly 24 million Filipino students enrolled in public schools, and maintain its position as one of the world's top outsourcing destinations for BPO and technology. 

With MOCHII BALL, schools can deliver quality computer science education - without the need for costly computer equipment - in three simple steps:

1. Teachers deliver the lesson according to the MOCHII BALL curriculum and lesson materials.*

2. On the workbooks that we'll provide, students will write solutions to logic-based challenges, using the Basic Algorithm Learning Language (BALL) syntax. 

3. Teachers take photos of the handwritten code and upload these onto the MOCHII BALL app, which uses A.I. and HTR to interpret and execute the provided commands. This gives students the opportunity to build, test, and debug their code in an authentic fashion, bringing them close to the experience they might have in a computer lab and in the workplace.

With this, any teacher with a single computer or laptop can successfully teach a computer science class in nearly the same manner as in a lab fully equipped with an Internet connection and a 1:1 student-to-computer ratio. 

*The lesson materials are based on Code.org's CS education curriculum, which is accessible even to non-CS graduates and is aligned with CTSE K-12 standards, and has been used by over 80 million students worldwide.

MOCHII BALL's long-term vision is to provide quality CS education to all public school students in the Philippines, which would impact around 24 million students enrolled in the public kindergarten, elementary, and high school levels. According to a 2021 report by the Philippine Department of Education, the ratio of computers to students is 1:19 for elementary schoolers and 1:9 for junior high schoolers, and only 64% of elementary schools and 72% of junior high schools have access to the Internet in the public sector. These numbers significantly worsen outside of the National Capital Region.

The early stages of BALL will target elementary school students, as research shows that children exposed to CS at the elementary level perform much better at reading, math, and science. With this, BALL has the potential added impact of improving our current standing as one of the lowest-scoring countries in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Students who take computer science classes are also able to improve their critical and algorithmic thinking skills, and are more likely to further their studies in high school and beyond.

The Purposeful Mochii aims to continuously gather feedback, support, and funding in order to improve and expand BALL, with the hopes of accommodating open sandbox programming for high schoolers and color-coded programming with manipulatives for kindergarteners. Once BALL is integrated into all levels of the basic education curriculum, it can equip students with a strong foundation in the creative and computational skills they'll need to thrive in an increasingly digital world - better preparing them for the future workforce and uplifting the Philippine economy as a whole.

I am a high school student, and throughout my mission of teaching kids how to code, I have experienced firsthand the challenges of implementing computer science in basic education in my country.

My family taught me how to code as soon as I could read and write, starting with logic puzzles like those included in MOCHII BALL. It helped me pick up more advanced coding skills easily, and opened up a world of opportunities as I realized how technology could be used to help solve real-world problems. I know the importance of developing digital skills and citizenship from a young age. However, I was frustrated by the lack of support for CS education during my elementary school years.

With this in mind, I started offering free coding workshops for kids in my community, but wanted to expand my reach. I began volunteering at the local science museum, ICT events, and robotics workshops, but it wasn't until I partnered with the Philippine office of a global IT company to host an annual hackathon for girls that I felt like I was making the kind of impact I'd been aspiring towards. However, during my efforts inviting more schools to participate in this initiative, I witnessed the digital divide firsthand. In the first year, only one public school was able to participate by using their teachers' laptops - the other schools we reached out to, though interested, cited a lack of computers and Internet connectivity. In the second year, we attempted to solve this by working with our partner IT company to host live workshops with laptops and Internet provided. It is here that I saw the bigger problem - though the private school students, having used computers often in their schools, went through the workshops with ease, many of the public school students struggled to keep up.

This inspired me to solution and launch MOCHII BALL. In the past 5 years that I have been pushing for my advocacy through speaking engagements, coding workshops, and hackathons; I have built a fledgling network of students, teachers, schools, government agencies, tech communities, and IT professionals, to whom I have reached out to consult for and pilot BALL. As an aspiring computer science student myself, and with this small community, I believe I have access to a diverse network of resources, teachers, and learners to continuously gather feedback and improve BALL. With this foundation, I hope to expand my reach even further to attain my goal of fully implementing computer science in the Philippine basic education curriculum.

I have built a working prototype that is able to support the logic puzzles and drawing challenges of Code.org's early CS Education curriculum. It includes handwriting recognition, A.I. trained to correct errors in the text inferred by the HTR, and a scalable module that currently supports the creation of various maze and Turtle-style drawing puzzles.

I have crafted an Hour of Code pilot lesson, which I have tested on Grade 4 and 5 students in a local mission school. I am currently working on completing all levels, features, and accompanying lesson materials needed to implement BALL this S.Y. 2024-25 for the 4th and 5th grade students of a public school that participated in my recently concluded hackathon.

I am a female high school sophomore from a third-world country who is preparing to take my advocacy of teaching kids how to code - which I have been championing for the past five years - to the next level. If there is one thing I have learned throughout my past attempts - be it workshops, events, or apps - no matter how awesome one's idea is, one can only go so far without the support of a credible community. This is especially true for me given my age and limited experience. I am fully aware that MOCHII BALL is an ambitious project that will take years to implement at the scale that I am envisioning. Going through this course and application was challenging, and I realized that there is still so much for me to learn and experience - but that's only made me even more determined! I believe that joining MIT Solve will give me the guidance, mentorship, credibility, and potential partners to finally achieve my mission of using BALL to deliver quality CS education to underserved communities in my country.

The most popular coding platforms for kids with full curriculums require a computer or tablet, internet connection, additional fees, or a combination of all three. BALL needs only a single computer to support a full class of 40 students with its AI powered app that is capable of interpreting and executing handwritten code. With this, students are still able to experience the process of building, testing, debugging, and seeing their output come to life on a digital screen in the same manner as in a fully equipped lab.

The technology can be further extended to accommodate more levels in CS education. The AI can be trained to recognize shapes or colors that correspond to certain commands, which would be more apt for kindergarten and primary levels. I am also exploring training an AI to recognize drawings of character sprites and interpret even more advanced code, such that high school levels can enjoy simple open sprite programming.

MOCHI BALL enables teachers to deliver CS education with an app that is capable of interpreting students' handwritten code, giving them an authentic experience of going through the software development process (build, test, debug) without the need to connect to the Internet or equip each student with their own computer unit. By making the platform and curriculum more accessible and significantly reducing the cost to maintain a CS computer lab, MOCHII BALL builds a stronger case for fully integrating CS in the basic education curriculum in the public sector, in the hopes of improving the logical, computational, digital, and creative skills of the approximately 24 million K-12 Filipino public school students and ultimately connecting them with more lucrative opportunities in the increasingly digital workforce. Research also shows that children exposed to CS in early education perform much better at reading, math, and science, which has the potential added impact of improving our country's current standing as one of the lowest-scoring countries in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).

Our vision is to make quality CS education available to all public school students in the basic education level in the Philippines. We will track the number of schools and students reached to monitor our progress. To attain our goal, we also need to enable more CS teachers through training programs. We will continuously track the number of teachers that are equipped to deliver CS education through BALL. Lastly, we need to expand BALL to accommodate all levels in K to 12. We will monitor our progress by keeping track of the proportion of levels supported compared to all the available levels in basic education.

As a low-cost solution, MOCHII BALL leverages existing open-source game development and HTR libraries. Powered by Python 3, it is a simple desktop app that performs handwriting recognition on uploaded files - however, as I currently do not have the resources to train a custom HTR model for students' handwriting, I instead trained a spellchecking model to correct misidentified characters. I did this by using GenAI to quickly generate texts that frequently use the most common BALL commands. To execute the detected code, BALL uses Pygame for standard problems and Turtle for drawing problems.

In the future, I'm expanding the project to recognize shapes and colors as BALL commands, for kindergarten and primary levels. Likewise, I'm exploring the recognition of hand-drawn character sprites to accommodate basic sprite programming for upper high school levels. I will also revisit uptraining the HTR model, once I have gathered enough samples of student handwriting from pilot schools. In the meantime, I'm considering developing a mobile companion app to accelerate the process of photographing student work and uploading it into the BALL application.

Two - I am mostly working on this project by myself, but have been consulting with a computer science graduate/teacher for the lesson materials.

I have been working on this solution for a year, and the Phase 1 pilot is currently in progress.

As a female aspiring Computer Science student in a country with the worst gender gap in STEM careers in the Asia Pacific, I understand the value of inclusion and diversity - which is one of the driving factors that led to BALL, whose vision is to implement quality Computer Science (CS) education for all at the basic education levels. Though its initial phase is focused on delivering CS education to public schools, I plan to leverage my growing network of teachers and learners to better understand how to serve all students of diverse ages, backgrounds, capabilities, and handicaps. I am planning to consult with The Purposeful Mochii's partner IT companies to ensure accessibility in the way I design my app and learning materials. I am fully aware of my limited capabilities and welcome anyone who shares the same mission as MOCHII BALL. I understand that fully realizing my vision will take years of continuous innovation, and look forward to the diverse community that will contribute to its success.

During its pilot phase, my social business model will rely heavily on donations, as well as partnerships with the corporate citizenship teams of local IT companies who share the same mission and would eventually benefit from the potential increase in IT talent. With the help of volunteer employees from these companies, MOCHII BALL will conduct teacher training and community engagement in order to reach more schools, while at the same time furthering our partners' marketing and corporate citizenship goals. 

Once the success of BALL has been established, I will consider switching to a fee-based model for training, app, and learning materials, which I will offer to local government units, the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT), and the Department of Education (DepED). This way, I'll be better equipped to sustain BALL and expand it to accommodate a nationwide scale.

Phase 1A PILOT (On-Going):

• Conduct Hour of Code sessions using BALL to demonstrate the app and curriculum and get more schools involved.

Phase 1B PILOT (Target: S.Y. 2024-25):

• Partner with at least 1 IT company (already have a positive response and planning is in progress) to run the curriculum in a public school for at least Grade 4/5 level throughout the school year.
• Gather feedback and continue to improve and expand BALL.

Phase 2 GROWTH (Target: S.Y. 2025-26):

• Partner with local IT companies to facilitate teacher training sessions and donate laptops to participating teachers as an incentive.

Phase 3 SCALE (Target: SY2026 and beyond):

• Expand BALL and the curriculum to support other grade levels (e.g. with manipulatives for lower levels and/or open sandbox programming for upper levels).
• Pitch to local government units to adapt BALL.

As BALL is still in its prototype phase, there is yet to be clear evidence of successful funding. To support our pilot phase, I aim to reach out to IT companies and organizations that have previously partnered with The Purposeful Mochii for projects with similar goals (such as our coding workshops and hackathons for kids). I already have a green light from one such company, and planning for the pilot in the upcoming school year is in progress. I hope that by joining this open challenge, I will be able to gain the knowledge and skills to develop a sustainable financial plan and approach the right investors to execute and scale it.