Codey

Abstract

Children today live in a digital world, yet few platforms make learning to code genuinely engaging, accessible, and creative. Codey is a full-stack interactive learning platform designed to teach programming concepts, digital literacy, and computational thinking to children through structured courses, gamified challenges, AI-powered tools, and a suite of creative game builders. The platform was built using Flutter for the cross-platform mobile client and Node.js with Express and MongoDB for the backend. Codey provides four built-in courses: Codey Jr., a 15- level block-based sequencing game; Digital Literacy, covering internet safety; Data is Everywhere, introducing data concepts; and Coding Chatbots, a 9-exercise course in which children learn the fundamentals of artificial intelligence by recording their own body-pose samples using a webcam, training a gesture classification model, and then using that model to control a game character through physical movement. Beyond these, educators can create and publish their own interactive courses using a visual course builder that supports slide lessons, quizzes, word searches, word matching, fill-in-the-blank exercises, swipe classification, and sorting activities all of which can be generated instantly via an AI assistant powered by the Groq API. A defining feature of Codey is its suite of four game creation environments: a front-view side-scroller builder, a top-view builder, a Scratch-like visual block programming environment with categories including Events, Motion, Control, Operators, and Variables, and a text-code builder with a custom programming language and a live game preview. 16 Students can design, build, and publish their own games, and browse creations from the community through a dedicated Discover tab. The system supports three roles: children (learners), parents (who monitor their child's activity by linking to their account using the child's unique code), and administrators (who oversee platform content and users). Classrooms are a peer-based feature where children join using a shared code and compete through weekly and head-to-head challenges with their friends, with activity feeds visible only among classroom members. The platform is fully bilingual in Arabic and English with right-to-left layout support, includes text-to-speech accessibility, and offers Google Sign-In. The result is a comprehensive, creative, and child- friendly coding education ecosystem.