What do you get when five 14-year-olds put their heads together to take on a digital challenge?
If they’re eighth-graders at Fulton’s Lime Kiln Middle School, the answer is simple: an award-winning new mobile app.
The girls in question — Lauren Hayden, Annie Larkins, Rebecca Li, Korie Scott and Jessica Zinderman — teamed up in the fall to enter the Verizon Foundation’s annual Innovative App Challenge. The challenge invites teams of middle and high school students to compete in creating a mobile app concept that addresses a problem in their school or community. The Lime Kiln team come up with an idea for an app that helps young teens find community service opportunities.
Earlier this year, the Howard County quintet’s “VolunteerMe” app concept beat out more than 1,000 other entries and was picked as one of eight national winners. For their effort, each of the girls received a Samsung Galaxy tablet, and this month, they and their sponsor, resource teacher Tracy Spillman, will get an all-expenses-paid trip to Dallas to present their app at the annual Technology Student Association conference. In addition, Lime Kiln Middle School will receive $20,000 to develop its STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) program.
The girls’ app odyssey began in the fall when Annie saw an ad for the contest. Thinking it would be fun, she recruited four of her pals to enter.
Developing the app was indeed fun, but it also was more work they imagined. The real work started after the girls won the contest, when they had to turn their concept into a functioning app. Working with a Massachusetts Institute of Technology-assigned master trainer, the students spent countless hours creating fusion tables, writing QR codes and other highly specialized tasks — all of which they first had to learn how to do.
“All of these features you see don’t just magically appear in an app,” Spillman explains. “They have to be specifically coded for each and every operation you choose to perform.”
It’s tiresome, time-consuming, often frustrating work, but the girls met the challenge and learned a valuable lesson in perseverance. “It shows you never give up even if you’re thinking it’s not worth it,” Korie says.
“But we don’t regret it,” says Jessica, speaking for all the girls. “I think my favorite part is we’re just a group of five friends, not necessarily the best in our math class or our science class, yet we managed to win this money for our school and do all these amazing things for volunteering.”
The adults who’ve worked with them appreciate their teamwork.
“They all have own strengths, whether it’s writing or computer programming,” Spillman says. “And they knew to combine all those talents to make this happen.”
Kristin Violette, the Connecticut high school technology teacher working as the girls’ MIT-assigned master trainer, has worked with other groups in past challenges and says this team was special.
“This is a stellar group, well beyond their years in terms of commitment, dedication and computer science thinking,” Violette says. “… They seem to be a really close-knit group, connected via this project and their victory, but also because of their friendships. I think that’s going to make them soar above previous groups.”
The VolunteerMe app is scheduled to be available this month.