By Michelle Williams
A team of students from Zionsville Community High School has won best in state in the Verizon Innovative App Challenge. The team was selected from among more than 1,200 submissions nationwide.
Abi Robinson, Shelby Paden, Jordan Thielbar, Violet Dusek and Courtney Matkovic will now move on to the national competition with their mobile app concept, Food For You. The app is designed to allow users to donate money to families participating in free and reduced lunch programs nationwide.
A $5,000 grant from the Verizon Foundation and tablets for each of the students on the team has been awarded for the state level win. The monetary prize will fund the initial expenses to start up a new STEM program at ZCHS for the 2016-2017 school year. The team plans to present the money to the school board in February.
ZCHS educator Bob Brennan initiated the entry into the app contest to get his economics classes involved in an outside-the-classroom project.
“I had an entrepreneur and a gentleman that works for Google come in to talk to the kids about developing app concepts and how to turn the entrepreneurial part of it into a business,” Brennan said.
“We didn’t consider winning, we were just going at it to see how it would work,” he added.
The team is now eligible to win the Fan Favorite award, which would earn them an additional $15,000 and the chance to work with experts from the MIT Media Lab to turn their concept into a working app.
HOW TO VOTE
The Fan Favorite competition round is open for voting until Jan. 31. Information on the contest, schools and app concepts can be found at appchallenge.tsaweb.org/vote. Voters can text FOODFORYOU2 to 22333 to submit their entry for the ZCHS team. National winners will be announced Feb. 2.
