Bayu Dwi Hatmoko SSi shows the user interface of his Banana application prototype

ITS Campus, ITS News-concerned to see the difficulties the son of his brother studied in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic and his desire to programming, Bayu Dwi Hatmoko SSi, doctoral student (S3) of Department of Physics Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember (ITS) created an application called Banana. The application has the usability to support elementary school level in learning math that can be used easily through gadgets.

Since the enactment of social restrictions due to the spread of coronavirus disease (Covid-19), schools from elementary to college began to eliminate face-to-face learning activities in the school area. Because of this, the school needs to look for another idea to continue the learning process. From all levels of education, everyone experiencing the toughest challenges. This is because in the golden time’s children have to be educated with the touch of teachers.

Because of the pandemic that requires learning from home or study (SFH), Bayu’s older brother shared his difficulties accompanying their children in learning, especially mathematics that is a specter for students. Seeing the development of the era, Bayu observed that children of elementary school age tend not to be interested in textual book-based learning. Instead, the child is happy about something interactive, such as video games on gadgets. From here comes the idea of creating a learning app, Banana.

“While making a useful application for children, as well as learning programming for myself,” said the winner of Magister Education Towards Doctoral Degree for Excellent Bachelor (PMDSU) in ITS.

With a week of studied programming, the prototype of his Banana application already has four menus namely calculation of the basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Not only that, but each menu is also equipped again with a submenu based on the type of numbers operated i.e. integer operations, decimal number operations, and fractional operations.

Bayu Dwi Hatmoko SSi, student of PMDSU Department of Physics who creates a learning application Banana

In the learning process, children do not directly work on difficult problems. So there needs to be a level of difficulty from easy problems to difficult to encourage understanding of concepts in children. Addressing this, Bayu adds an option in each of its submenus. “The operation of the number I separated again from the operation of the number of units, tens, hundreds, to thousands,” the man who also worked in the Laboratory of Theoretical Physics and Natural Philosophy fo Departement of Physics ITS.

In terms of novelty, Bayu reveals there is no significant innovation from a similar pre-existing application. Students who learn to the doctoral program in this field of physics emphasized that the purpose of creating this Banana application is Bayu’s productive business in the middle of the pandemic to improve its programming science skills.

According to men who pursue quantum teleportation for his dissertation, although it is already a similar application with his Banana application the process of making the application is useful to develop his knowledge. “Someone needs to do the process from scratch, so there is no missing information from every technology we use,” he explained.

Meanwhile, the Banana application made by Bayu is not yet accessible to the public because it has not been officially released. This prototype will be developed again to be more interactive and attractive in view and if possible will be developed with the addition of other materials into the application. Bayu tends to learn about the cross-platform so that the application can be used both on Android, iOS, and Windows. (ram/rev/ITS Public Relations)