At YokyWorks, we are extremely fortunate to get to work with some of the most talented kids. As any of our education specialists will tell you, our students teach us just as much as we teach them. We’d like to take this opportunity to introduce you to one of our favorite YokyWorks kids - Johannes!
Johannes is an industrious 9-year-old graduate of our program who spends his time reading and doing computer programming. As Johannes puts it: “I often build tools with electronic components and write software. I also enjoy reading books in my free time.” As he explained to us, he especially loves reading books about math, but believes “it would be harder to read those books before I went to YokyWorks.” At 9 years old, he’s naturally unsure about what he wants to be when he grows up, but he imagines it might
have something to do with software development.
While talented in many ways, Johannes is particularly driven to improve the world around him. In his own words, “I’m excited about making things to help people solve their problems.” This drive to engineer helpful solutions, combined with his positive experiences at YokyWorks inspired him to work on developing a new app he calls “Word Picker.” According to Johannes:
“The Word Picker app finds words that follow a specified spelling pattern, sound, or syllable type from a word bank containing up to 116,500 words. Through many different options on the webpage, you can specify many different search parameters, including the spelling pattern, sound, order of syllable type, word length, and more.”
In addition to his aptitude for engineering, Johannes is also exceptionally thoughtful. Even though, as Johannes articulated, the Word Picker service is useful for “anyone who wants to find words that follow a specified spelling or syllable criteria,” he created it specifically for “teachers wanting to find words to give to their students.” He explained that during one of their many engaging conversations, his YokyWorks education specialist shared with him her need to quickly find words to give to her students. So, he naturally felt compelled to help her. As he stated:
“I offered to create a tool for her because I find satisfaction in helping other people, and creating the word picker service was one way I could do so.”
We are honored to be able to count Johannes among our program graduates and extremely proud of all he has accomplished. We can’t wait to see what wonderful opportunities the future has in store for him!
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