Tolland High School Students Win Prize for Mobile App

Editor’s note: We published this story earlier in the week, but here it is again in case you missed it.

Two Tolland High School students - along with students from six other area high schools - recently made a field trip to Trinity College to show off the mobile phone apps they have spent long hours developing this school year.

Matthew Fusco and Ryan Greenberg, and the rest of the students, worked under the tutelage of their computer science teachers, all of whom received special training at Trinity through the Mobile Computer Science Principles (CSP) project.

The Mobile CSP project was made possible through a three-year, $926,098 National Science Foundation grant awarded to Ralph Morelli, professor of computer science at Trinity, in conjunction with the Connecticut chapter of the Computer Science Teachers Association.

When the 70 participating students took their places at tables set up around the perimeter of the room, they were excited to show their apps to Trinity staff, faculty, and students who were invited to vote for their favorites. The students demonstrated apps inspired by their own or their families’ day-to-day organizational challenges, including apps called “Mama’s Grocery List,” and “Agendall,” as well as fun and educational ones, such as “Quiz of Quiz,” a trivia game, and “Flappy Bron,” a LeBron James-themed game.

When votes were tallied and winners announced, a team from West Hartford’s Hall High School received first prize for “Drive Mode,” a location-aware app intended to minimize distracted driving and increase safety. Christopher Gabow and Joel Margolis, who designed the app received a new tablet computer as a prize.

The second- and third-place winning apps and teams were, respectively, “Lawmen Territory” (Isabela Roldan and Martha Smith, Jonathan Law High School, Milford), and “Mama’s Grocery List” (Fusco and Greenberg, Tolland High School).

Both runners up teams received Best Buy gift certificates.

Other schools participating in the Expo were Bloomfield High School, Conard High School (West Hartford), Hartford Magnet Trinity College Academy, and University High School of Science and Engineering.

A rigorous computer science curriculum based on the College Board’s emerging computer science Advanced Placement (AP) Computer Science Principles course, the Mobile CSP course has been highlighted by the NSF as an example of a catalyst for change in computer science education.

Photo: (Left to right) Pauline Lake ’13, teaching consultant for the Mobile CSP Project, and Ralph Morelli, computer science professor at Trinity College, congratulate third-place winners Ryan Greenberg and Matthew Fusco of Tolland High School. They demonstrated their app, “Mama’s Grocery List.” Photo credit: John Atashian