Ten Teams of Middle and High School Students Win National Mobile App Design Competition; Will Work With Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab to Develop Apps

NEW YORK, March 18, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Ten teams of creative middle and high school students across the country are the winners of a national competition to develop mobile applications that address a need or problem in the students' communities or schools. The winning apps range from encouraging a community to do more recycling, to making it easier for students with disabilities to take notes in class, to identifying invasive plant species in lakes.

The competition, the Verizon Innovative App Challenge, was created by the Verizon Foundation in partnership with the Technology Student Association to help boost student engagement and interest in science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM.  The students were asked to use their STEM skills to design app concepts that provided real-world solutions for issues in their communities or schools.     

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab will continue to work with students of the winning teams to refine their projects. Verizon will provide the teams with professional support and training to help them bring their concepts to market.  In addition, each winning team's school will receive a $10,000 Verizon Foundation grant to advance STEM education, and each team member will receive the new Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1, courtesy of Samsung Mobile.

The winning teams – from five middle schools and five high schools – and their app concepts are:

• Bronx Academy of Promise, New York City – Quest Math, which helps students increase their speed in basic math computations through a mythology-themed game.
• Emory H. Markle Intermediate, Hanover, Pa. – Voice Notes, which revolutionizes note-taking for students with disabilities and organizes information to create effective study guides.
• Friends' Central School, Wynnewood, Pa. – STEAMnet, which is designed to support creative thinking and virtual collaboration, especially outside the standard school day.
• Forney High School, Forney, Texas – One|Place, which offers students, faculty and the community one location to find details about upcoming school and community events.  
• Hampstead Academy, Hampstead, N.H. – Chow Checker, which easily identifies the ingredients of food products to help individuals with allergies avoid problem foods.
• Jefferson Township Middle School, Oak Ridge, N.J. – Invase Erase, which identifies invasive plant species that attack the environment and provides solutions to minimize and/or contain them.
• Rock Canyon High School, Highlands Ranch, Colo. – CaringHands, which increases awareness of global problems and allows the user to donate directly to charities supporting solutions to these issues.
• South River High School, Edgewater, Md. – Study Buddy, which helps students develop better time-management skills to get assignments done on time.  
• Spalding Catholic High School, Granville, Iowa – AgNote MAX, which makes it easier to track all aspects of farming.
• STEM Center Middle School, West Fargo, N.D. – Recycling Bin, which encourages members of local communities to increase recycling efforts and reduce the need for landfills.

"It's clear that technology can get kids excited about learning, and it was delightful to see the care and thoughtfulness these students put into developing a solution to a problem," said Rose Stuckey Kirk, president of the Verizon Foundation. "We were impressed by their creativity, their ability to collaborate as a team, and their interest in developing a mobile app."  

Students from Rock Canyon High School said that the Innovative App Challenge was fun because it allowed them to engage the entire school in helping them develop their app idea. After receiving feedback that there should be an app for supporting charitable causes, the students created CaringHands, which allows users to donate directly to a charity of their choice.

More than 470 student teams from across the country submitted concepts for the Innovative App Challenge.  The students, working in teams of five to 10, were guided by faculty advisers and received tutorials from Verizon's Innovation Center engineers, who created instructional videos on app design and development. The submissions were housed on the Innovation Portal of Project Lead The Way, a leading provider of rigorous and innovative STEM education programs used in middle and high schools across the U.S. 

In working with the MIT Media Lab to develop their winning apps and make them available for download from Google's Play Store, the students will learn how to use the MIT App Inventor tool and the basics of coding. Teams that build their apps by June 7 will be invited to present them at the National Technology Student Association Conference in Orlando, Fla., later that month.

The winning app designs were selected by a panel of STEM and industry experts from the Verizon Innovation Center, MIT Media Lab, Samsung Mobile, the New York Hall of Science, the National Academy Foundation, National Geographic, the International Reading Association and the American Association of the Advancement of Science. Entries were judged based on their clear identification of a need or problem in a school or community; originality; creativity; the viability of the concept; and the applicability of STEM principles and practices.

Another Verizon Innovative App Challenge will be held in the fall.

The Verizon Foundation is focused on accelerating social change by using the company's innovative technology to help solve pressing problems in education, healthcare and energy management. Since 2000, the Verizon Foundation has invested more than half a billion dollars to improve the communities where Verizon employees work and live. Verizon's employees are generous with their donations and their time, having logged more than 6.65 million hours of service to make a positive difference in their communities. For more information about Verizon's philanthropic work, visit www.verizonfoundation.org; or for regular updates, visit the Foundation on Facebook (www.facebook.com/verizonfoundation) and Twitter (www.twitter.com/verizongiving).

Samsung and Galaxy Note are registered trademarks of Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.

Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE, Nasdaq: VZ), headquartered in New York, is a global leader in delivering broadband and other wireless and wireline communications services to consumer, business, government and wholesale customers.  Verizon Wireless operates America's most reliable wireless network, with more than 98 million retail connections nationwide.  Verizon also provides converged communications, information and entertainment services over America's most advanced fiber-optic network, and delivers integrated business solutions to customers in more than 150 countries, including all of the Fortune 500.  A Dow 30 company with nearly $116 billion in 2012 revenues, Verizon employs a diverse workforce of 183,400.  For more information, visit www.verizon.com.

VERIZON'S ONLINE NEWS CENTER: Verizon news releases, executive speeches and biographies, media contacts, high-quality video and images, and other information are available at Verizon's online News Center at www.verizon.com/news.  To receive news releases by email, visit the News Center and register for customized automatic delivery of Verizon news releases.

SOURCE Verizon