Rising Tide Charter Public School is pleased to announce that its Software Development students won the Congressional App Challenge (CAC) for the 9th District of Massachusetts. The winning app was submitted by the team made up of Rising Tide students, Victoria Rice, Leah Maciel, Brynna McNulty, and Joshua Krueger. The students were presented citations by Congressman Keating at the Plymouth 400 office, and they demonstrated their app to the Congressman and staff from Plymouth 400.
The students won for their creation of PlimothARWalkingTour, an app that encourages people of all ages in the Plymouth area to explore the town. This is especially pertinent to the thousands of people who will be in Plymouth celebrating the 400th anniversary of the landing of the Mayflower in 2020. According to the students, “We want our app to encourage people of all ages, but particularly younger people, to experience the historic sites of our town through our application of AR technology.”
Run by the US House of Representatives, the CAC is designed to engage student creativity and encourage them to learn to code while inspiring them to pursue careers in computer science. This nationwide event allows middle and high school students from across the country to “compete against their peers by creating and exhibiting their software application, or ‘app’, for mobile, tablet, or computer devices on a platform of their choice.” In the five years of the Congressional App Challenge, the program has yielded 1134 App Challenges across 48 states.
“I am proud to support and witness our students collaboratively grow their app development skills and employ their unique vision to create technological artifacts that highlight the rich history of our local region,” said Theresa Szczepanski, Rising Tide’s Upper School Mathematics Teacher and Mathematics Curriculum Coordinator.
The students will also have the chance to demonstrate their app for members of the United States House of Representatives at the House of Code event on March 24th in Washington D.C.
