If you are a middle school student interested in pursuing programming, a great way to build your portfolio and familiarize yourself with the basics is developing your own programming project ideas. 

In this blog, we cover 10 such programming ideas for middle school students. We’ve listed a range of beginner and intermediate coding projects so even if you’re at the start of your programming journey, we’ve got you covered!

1. One-Page Website Coding

An interesting topic that you can opt for if you’re interested in web development is creating a one-page website! 

To begin with, you need to devise a layout for your content. If you're finding it hard to devise a layout, you can go through other websites you like to get ideas.  Once your layout is set, you can step further to code your website with just HTML and CSS which are less robust technologies.  

For a landing page or business website with beautiful texts, images, and responsive links and buttons, HTML and CSS are more than enough for you. Through this project, you'll learn the core concepts of these languages, all the while creating a website that you can utilize to show off future projects and your work! 

Experience Level: Beginner to Intermediate.

Skills required: Basic understanding of Coding.

Coding Language(s) required: HTML and CSS.

2. Audiobook with Python

If you are someone who needs to convert a text file into an audio file, consider building an audiobook from scratch! Through this project, you can build the code needed to turn text files into audio files, which will help you understand how to mix programming and audio technology.

Do note that to do this with Python, you need to embark on the installation of specific modules which you'll import to create a GUI window. The modules are Tkinter, PyPDF2, and pyttsx3. And the GUI can browse and as well select your text file which is usually a PDF. Normally, there's a function that extracts and reads texts aloud and another that saves the loud audio as an MP3.

Experience Level: Beginner.

Skills required: Basic Python knowledge and Audio Technology experience.

Coding Language(s) Required: Python.

3. Face Detection Project

With this project, you'll delve into computer vision technology and the ethical roles it plays in security systems. There are many examples such as facial recognition, human pose estimation, and obstacle detection, however, face detection is a great starting point! 

To start, you will need to first install OpenCV - a computer vision library that supports languages like Python and more. Once the installation is complete, the Haar Cascade classifier for face detection is loaded. This function reads visuals and converts them for a more efficient detection. 

Faces are often detected and highlighted with rectangles.  So, the idea is to learn step by step, how to load visuals, detect the faces they present, and learn all things attached to detecting different facial features.

Through this project, you’ll learn how your devices can detect a human face in visual inputs like images and videos!

Experience Level: Beginner to Intermediate.

Skills required: Ideal for students with basic knowledge in Computer Vision Technology, and Programming.

Coding Language(s) Required: Python with OpenCV.

4. Text-Based AI Chat Bot App

Perhaps you've used some ChatBots, and are wondering how your computer can respond as if it were a human. Well, opting to create a personal Chatbot is a great way to develop the foundational skills in Python and understand web interaction! 

Although you’re coding with Python, you must start with the installation of ChatterBot and Flask, which are the necessary libraries. When you import the ChatterBot and its corpus trainer, your Chatbot can be set up and trained. 

Note that it is the function of Flask to help you integrate your Chatbot into a web app. As such, it'll create an interface through which you or other users can interact with your Chatbot.

Experience Level: Beginner to Intermediate.

Skills required: Basic understanding of Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language Processing, and Coding.

Coding Language(s) Required: Python. 

 

5. Weather App Project

A weather app prediction tracker is another interesting project that you can opt for if you’re looking to get some first-hand experience with coding in Python. 

For this project, you must ensure that you've installed the ‘requests’ library before you start. The Request will interact with Open Weather Map (an Application Programming Interface that can be used to obtain weather data from a server). 

The coding in this project is a bit above the beginner level. Python codes are used to get data about specific cities or locations and parse JSON responses. This project will expose you to the importance of weather forecasts in agriculture, daily activities, and the world at large! 

Experience Level: Intermediate.

Skills required: Basic knowledge of Machine Learning, Data Analysis, and Python. 

Coding Language(s) Required:  Python.

6. Health Tracker Project

As someone who cares about their health and can't afford to visit the hospital every day, but needs to monitor their health status, the health tracker project comes in handy!

You can create your simple health tracker with only HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. As if you’re developing a web page, you must plan a layout. This is how the three languages work together:

• HTML does the structuring, letting you have a simple interface on a pretty webpage.

• CSS takes up the styling work. 

• With JavaScript, you can get your web app to function and get your display updated.

Experience Level: Beginner to Intermediate.

Skills required: Basic skills in Web App Development using coding as well as in Health Education.

Coding Language(s) required: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

7. Game Creation with JavaScript

In this project, you can combine your gaming experience with coding. JavaScript games are exciting, easily built, and a fantastic way for you to start coding.  When applied to your model, life gets into your animations and your gaming experience is improved. 

As in some other models, you have to install a game engine or rendering library such as PixiJS, BabylonJS, Phaser, melonJS, or Three.js. JavaScript text code can't handle everything alone, so these game engines help to add stuff like sound, graphics, animations, and more. 

This project will teach you how to design both web-based and mobile games with JavaScript, and also develop 2D and 3D games! Lastly, you can benefit from the extensive resources that coders have provided for developing games. 

Experience Level: Beginner.

Skills required: Gaming experience, Basic knowledge of game development and coding. 

Coding Language(s) Required: JavaScript.

8. Build a Countdown Timer 

This simple project is a great way to combine real-time data manipulation with web development! Moreover, you will familiarize yourself with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript as you will require all 3 for this project. 

You'll use the HTML to structure where to display things like days, hours, minutes, and seconds. CSS will help you style your timer by applying fonts, colors, and more. Meanwhile, JavaScript's functionality is to calculate the remaining time using the `setInterval()` function. It often subtracts the current time from the target time and ensures that the values are updated every moment. 

 

Experience Level: Beginner.

Skills required: Basic understanding of coding with multiple languages. 

Coding Language(s) required: JavaScript, HTML, CSS. 

9. Building a Basic Calculator

Using Python to make a simple calculator that can do basic operations: addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division is a great coding project for beginners. This design entails a display of a simple board with digits 1 to 9, basic math operators together with an equals sign button. 

This project doesn't require you to install any library since Python alone is sufficient. Furthermore, it will teach you how to use Python’s input method to take input for two variables from users. Then, you'll apply a conditional statement ‘if...elif...else’ so that your program will execute just the operations the users have chosen. 

Basically, all you're doing is accepting inputs such as the operands and operations from users, and then revealing the results of their calculations. This is an excellent way of strengthening your Python basics such as input method and conditional statements! 

Experience Level: Beginner.

Skills required: Basic Understanding of Coding and Mathematics. 

Coding Language(s) Required: Python.

10. Voice-Activated Assistant

Creating a Voice-Activated Assistant is a great way to practice coding and become familiar with speech recognition technology and how software transcribes speech into texts for computers.

To make this possible, you'll combine Python with libraries like SpeechRecognition and PyAudio. These libraries enhance your Voice-Activated Assistant to pick up and respond to audio commands. 

Experience Level: Beginner to Intermediate.
Skills required: Basic understanding of Coding and Voice Recognition technology. 

Coding Language(s) Required: Python.

If you’re looking for a competitive mentored research program in subjects like data science, machine learning, political theory, biology, and chemistry, consider applying to Horizon’s Research Seminars and Labs! This is a selective virtual research program that lets you engage in advanced research and develop a research paper on a subject of your choosing. Horizon has worked with 1000+ high school students so far and offers 600+ research specializations for you to choose from. 

You can find the application link here.

If you’re looking to build a project/research paper in the field of AI & ML, consider applying to Veritas AI! 

Veritas AI is founded by Harvard graduate students. Through the programs, you get a chance to work 1:1 with mentors from universities like Harvard, Stanford, MIT, and more to create unique, personalized projects. In the past year, we had over 1000 students learn AI & ML with us. You can apply here!

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