Students from Shenandoah Middle School in Miami and the iTECH Academy at Miami Springs Senior High have moved a little closer to a national award, earning “Best In Region” honors in the Verizon Innovative App Challenge. The schools have earned $5,000 cash grants to further develop or support STEM programs.
Both schools are now in the running to be one of eight Best in Nation winners where students will win tablets and learn directly from MIT Media Lab on how to code and bring their app to life. Best in Nation winners will also receive an additional $15,000 grant to advance STEM programs.
In its third year, the national competition developed by Verizon and the Technology Student Association encourages STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) learning, and challenges students to design mobile applications that address a need or problem in their schools or communities.
iTECH Miami Springs students developed “Quick Scholar.” The app helps students, parents, and advisers create a personalized student profile to quickly sift through scholarships on the Web. The app then identifies the best scholarships and grants that match that student’s unique metadata.
The Shenandoah students developed a concept for the “My School Bus Tracker” application. With Miami’s especially unpredictable weather and traffic, the app will help students and/or parents use their wireless phones track the location of their specific school bus and provide an accurate estimated time of arrival to the bus stop in the mornings and afternoons.
“Best In Nation” winners will earn an additional $15,000 cash grant. Each winning team member also will receive a wireless tablet from Samsung. In addition, MIT App Inventor Master Trainers from the Center for Mobile Learning at the MIT Media Lab will train the top teams on coding and app development. Students also will be invited to present their app ideas in person at the National TSA Conference in Dallas, courtesy of Verizon.
Verizon and MIT also will help the winning students code their app concepts, making them ready for sharing and distribution. Apps developed during the first two years of the competition have been downloaded more than 26,000 times from the Google Play store.
Last week we featured the Shenandoah team’s video – watch it here.
This week, we feature iTech’s team video above. The iTech team is pictured below.
Posted Jan., 16, 2015