This year’s winner is Weston’s Theodore Luu and his app “Level Up”
MALDEN, MA - Today, Assistant Speaker Clark (MA-5) announced her district’s winners of the annual Congressional App Challenge. The Congressional App Challenge is designed to inspire innovative efforts around STEM, coding, and computer science education for our nation’s youth. Each winning app may be put on display in the U.S. Capitol Building for one year.
Theodore Luu, a junior at Weston High School, was chosen as the 2021 winner for Massachusetts’ Fifth District. Luu’s app, called “Level Up,” is an online platform that connects high schoolers with organizations that work with underserved, underrepresented students in grades 1 through 8 in order to provide them free, online tutoring in STEM+.
“Every year, I have the privilege of challenging our district’s talented middle and high school students to innovate and experiment with computer science for the Congressional App Challenge. Their creativity and coding skills always blow me away, and 2021 was no exception,” said Assistant Speaker Clark. “Theo’s app doesn’t just demonstrate his coding skills, but also meets a need in our community. Helping our youngest learners by connecting them to mentors for free, online tutoring in STEM+ will benefit us all and help foster the next generation of computer scientists.”
On developing his app, Luu said, “I wanted to make something that I would enjoy using, and hoped to make it useful to the community. I had already been involved in many initiatives to teach underserved students, and decided that developing a website to unite student's efforts, and make it easier was a need. After finishing the final project, I extended it by deploying it using Heroku, and talking with my school’s tutoring club to help utilize the site.”
Dohun Kim of Weston Middle School placed second for his app “A11y Checker,” a desktop application that checks the websites’ accessibility issues to immediately improve them for every user. Zainab Khorakiwala of Lexington High School placed third for her website “Food2Animal” which allows a user to pick a food item and receive a list of animals that it can’t be fed to.
Luu will be honored at the #HouseofCode Capitol Hill Reception in Washington D.C. alongside winners from other Congressional districts. His app will also be displayed in the US Capitol Building and featured on the House of Representatives’ website, House.gov. Please visit https://katherineclark.house.gov/ to view all the winning apps.
Each spring, middle and high school students from around the country are invited to participate in the annual Congressional App Challenge. Since the program launched four years ago, it has inspired over 14,000 students across 48 states to program an app.
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