Want To Do Good?

There Might Be An NHS App For That

By Eliza Hallabeck

In its second year at Newtown High School, the Information Technology Research And Development (ITRD) class, formerly called Connecticut Technology Innovation Academy, is now working on individual mobile applications to help spread community service cheer.

“We have a great new group this year,” said course instructor Kristin Violette on Wednesday, November 10. Most of the students are first year students to the program, but Ms Violette said each student seems to be embracing the type of classroom environment the program provides; an environment where students can develop personal strength.

A number of group activities were held at the start of the school year to garner creative thinking, according to Ms Violette, and now the group is “getting some good ideas.”

Too many ideas, Ms Violette said, and that is a good thing. While not all of the mobile applications — think iPod or BlackBerry apps — will become available to consumers by the end of the yearlong program, some will.

The ITRD course was offered as an after school program at NHS before it became a full-year course during the last school year.

“In the fall semester you will work independently to propose and develop a prototype of an app or widget as a solution to the course challenge. You will produce three items: an application prototype, a whitepaper, and a presentation. In the spring, you will join together with your classmates to develop a classwide team solution to present at the Expo in May,” an explanation for this year’s ITRD course reads.

By Wednesday, students were working on video blogs that marked progress on their individual apps. The video blogs will be posted on the website www.CTStudentVideos.com. Each year, the ITRD course, funded by Education Connection, challenges students to create a program based on that year’s theme. Last year’s students were asked to create a computer game that promoted a “green theme,” and NHS students responded by creating Geoshock, a game based around geothermal energy that incorporates a classic click and drag pipe game, think Pipe Dream.

This year students are responding with apps like freshman Jordan Salvesen’s grocery shopping application that can show a shopper where the cheapest items are available and which local grocery store will allow for the cheapest overall shopping list. Another student, freshman Tristan Villamil, is working on an application that will show its users a list of local opportunities to participate in community service projects or events. Students were also given the option to create widgets, but each student chose to create an application.

“I’m doing an app about energy conservation,” said sophomore Sean Sonntag. Sean explained his application calculates how much energy people are using and what they could do to minimize that use.

Sitting next to Sean, freshman Kevin Gorman said he is working on an application that will encourage its users to donate money to a charity of their choice. When the buyer purchases the application, the money will be donated to a charity, and each time the buyer advances to a new level of the hacky sack game, money will again be donated to a charity.

In the spring semester of the ITRD course the students will join together as a class to create one of the projects further to present at an ITRD Expo in May. As part of the class, along with attending exposition events, students also visit IBM four times a school year.

Kevin said the field trips are some of his favorite things about the course, because they give students an opportunity to see what other projects students are working on.

“I like that we are doing things in school that you might not be able to do,” said Sean.