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Inspired by their visually-impaired friend Andres Salas, a group of six Resaca Middle School girls has made their school proud.
\nThe group \u2013 Cassandra Baquero, Grecia Cano, Caitlyn Gonzalez, Kayleen Gonzalez, Janessa Leija, and Jacqueline Garcia Torres \u2013 earned a Best in Region Award in the second annual Verizon Innovative App Challenge.
\nThe national program is aimed to boosting students\u2019 interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
\nThe school was notified Tuesday that they were one of 24 regional recipients, and sponsor Maggie Bolado has not stopped smiling since. Resaca will now receive a $5,000 cash grant for its school.
\nTheir app concept, called Hello Navi, is designed to assist a visually impaired person navigate inside a building. It integrates a variety of digital tools such as a compass, scanner, VoiceOver, optical braille readers, and Google indoor navigation technology.
\nThe design has been set up to guide Andres around the halls of Resaca Middle School. They received a Best in State award in January, and has now won two rounds of judging.
\nNext is a live virtual presentation before judges that could take them to be one of eight national finalists.
\nThe Innovative App Challenge was created by the Verizon Foundation, in partnership with the Technology Student Association, to encourage students to use technology to help solve local social issues.
\nThe school will receive $5,000 grant to be applied to Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) programs at the school.
\nStudent teams from across the country submitted more than 770 app concepts. The 24 winning teams \u2013 12 each from middle schools and high schools \u2013 represent the West, Midwest, South and East regions. Nearly 1,300 teams entered the contest.
\nBolado and other school colleagues will participate in an online course \u201cTeaching App Creation with MIT App Inventor,\u201d taught by app development experts from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab Center for Mobile Learning.
\n\u201cI was only going to sponsor one team, but the counselors said five teams this way,\u201d Bolado said. \u201cThe kids had to come up with the concept, which was that we needed to identify a problem or issue on campus or in our community that the app would benefit.\u201d
\nBolado asked community leaders to speak to students about ideas. One speaker was Charlotte Smith, Mobility Specialist from Region I Education Service Center, the mobility specialist, and talked to the group of girls that won Best in State and Best in Region.
\nThat\u2019s how it all began,\u201d Bolado said. \u201cWe met four times a week Monday through Thursday at 7:30 a.m. for two months brainstorming and getting their essay ready.\u201d
\nPaperwork was submitted to Verizon in December.
\nEight Best in Nation winners will be named Feb. 19, chosen from the Best in Region teams. The eight will earn an additional $15,000 cash grant for their schools and will be invited to present their apps at the 2014 National TSA Conference in Washington, D.C., courtesy of Verizon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Inspired by their visually-impaired friend Andres Salas, a group of six Resaca Middle School girls has made their school proud. The group \u2013 Cassandra Baquero, Grecia Cano, Caitlyn Gonzalez, Kayleen Gonzalez, Janessa Leija, and Jacqueline Garcia Torres \u2013 earned a Best in Region Award in the second annual Verizon Innovative App Challenge. The national program […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":2382,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lfcisd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2381"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2381\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2383,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2381\/revisions\/2383"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}