#CodingLabStudents: Tan Le-Jia Claire, ICS 2025/26 Platinum Award Winner!
Congratulations to Claire for winning the ICS 25/26 Platinum + Judge’s Choice (Most Promising Coder) Award!
Meet our Coding Lab student, Tan Le-Jia Claire, whose passion for coding and storytelling has inspired her to create engaging projects that combine creativity with meaningful learning. At the International Coding Showcase (ICS) 2025/26, she impressed the judges with her original platformer game, earning both the Platinum Award and the Judges' Choice (Most Promising Coder) Award.
Her project demonstrates how creativity, perseverance, and a love for learning can come together to create experiences that are both fun and educational. Now let’s hear more from Claire about her coding journey!
“Over five years of developing my skills through Coding Lab classes and self-learning, I’ve grown from connecting simple Scratch blocks to creating award-winning international projects.”
Tell us a little about yourself!
I enjoy expressing my ideas and creativity through coding, mostly by creating games and animations using Scratch and Python. During my free time, I also enjoy writing, especially Minecraft stories, because I am a huge Minecraft fan. In fact, my Scratch profile picture is an Ender Dragon from Minecraft, one of my favourite characters from the game.
How did your coding journey begin?
I started coding when I was 7 years old after my father introduced me to Scratch. I was fascinated by how connecting just a few coding blocks together could create a working project. Over the next five years, I continued developing my coding skills through both self-learning and Coding Lab classes.
I've always enjoyed playing platformer games on Scratch, so when it came time to create my ICS project, I decided to design my own original take on the genre while adding my own creative ideas.
What inspired you to participate in ICS 2025/26?
I decided to participate in the International Coding Showcase again because I had such an enjoyable experience in ICS 2024/25, where my project on protecting endangered species received the Gold Award. That experience motivated me to challenge myself even further and create an even stronger project this year.
Since ICS welcomes submissions from students around the world, I also wanted to see how my coding skills compared internationally. At the same time, the competition gave me the opportunity to combine education with creativity. While developing my platformer game, I learned much more about my chosen United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, making the entire experience both meaningful and enjoyable.
What was the biggest lesson you learned during the project?
One of the biggest lessons I learned was the importance of resilience. My platformer game included many different gameplay elements, and throughout development I encountered countless bugs that needed to be fixed. Although debugging was sometimes challenging, it was incredibly rewarding to solve each problem and see my game gradually come together as I had envisioned.
I also learned to be more open-minded. After testing an early version of my game, my family suggested adding several extra features to make it more engaging. Rather than dismissing their ideas, I carefully considered their feedback and incorporated many of their suggestions. Looking back, those improvements made the final game much stronger than I had originally planned.
“Building on my ICS Gold Award last year to win Platinum this year, I aim to combine strong programming foundations with AI tools to revolutionize educational gaming and gamified learning!”
What are your aspirations for the future?
With AI tools making coding more accessible than ever, I hope to continue building a strong foundation in programming while learning how to use AI effectively as a creative partner. By combining solid coding skills with AI, I believe I can spend more time focusing on innovation, creativity, and solving meaningful real-world problems.
In the future, I hope to create more educational games that people of all ages can enjoy. I believe that gamification is one of the most effective ways to help people learn and remember new concepts, and I would love to continue developing games that make learning both engaging and fun.
At Coding Lab, we're incredibly proud of Claire's creativity, perseverance, and passion for lifelong learning. Her dedication to continuously improving her projects and using games as a tool for education reflects the qualities of an outstanding young coder. We look forward to seeing the exciting educational games she creates in the future and wish her every success on her coding journey!
Our #CodingLabStudents blogs feature our ambitious students and their ongoing coding journeys – be it the budding coder or advanced Python Pro, we appreciate each and every single one’s efforts as they progress to greater heights. 🌱
Coding Lab offers an award-winning curriculum specially for ages 5 to 18 – check out our courses to begin your own coding journey today!
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