By: Mike Rhodes—
Yorktown, IN—Verizon awarded its Best in State Innovative Learning App Challenge to Yorktown Middle School. The Yorktown team received Verizon’s Innovative Learning App Challenge prizes at an afternoon rally today for the entire sixth-grade class.
The rally was organized this afternoon by the school and nearly 200 students attended. Prizes included $5,000 for Yorktown Middle School and tablets with 4G LTE service for each team member. Students on the winning team were: Kolton Nanko, Aiden Riegle, Allie Wilhelm, Raya Tewari and Maria Alexander.
The team’s winning app idea for Best in State was selected from more than 1,800 submissions nationwide and was inspired by the team’s desire to help others with critical information about severe food allergies. According to YMS language arts teacher Shanan Riegle, “The idea for the app needed to solve a problem in a community or a school.”
Allie Wilhelm (far left) stands beside her other winning team members and explains to the rest of her 200 middle school classmates what their winning app was about. Photo by: Mike Rhodes
The winning app idea now goes to a national contest and here’s how you can help! There is an additional opportunity for members of the public to vote for the Yorktown Middle School team’s Allergy Aid app as a national Fan Favorite. If selected, the school wins an additional $15,000 prize and the team works with the MIT Media Lab to make its app a reality.
For Final Nationwide Voting: Voting for the Verizon App Challenge Fan Favorite award ends Feb. 14. Anyone can vote by texting ALLAID to 22333. Only one vote is allowed per mobile device.
Verizon Innovative Learning App Challenge website:
https://appchallenge.tsaweb.org/
Click here to see how many votes YMS is getting for the national contest. (As of this writing, they have 486 votes.)
You can check out the video about their app idea below.
