Students design, build and pitch an app in 24hrs

Pilot is an organization that hosts high school hackathons all over the country. Recently they sponsored a Hackathon in Washington DC for high school students. They had 24 hours to come up with an idea for an app, build it and then present it to the judges. All meals were provided and Microsoft donated their offices for the event.

Eleanor Roosevelt High Entrants

11 of the 12 students from our school were 9th graders and mostly girls. Most of the other students there were boys from technical schools from 5 other states and with years of programming experience and computer classes.

All Night Session

They started at 12:00 AM Saturday and worked all night through Sunday until 12:00 when they had to demo their apps to the judges. The best 12 were selected to give presentations to everyone at the award ceremony. It ended at 5:30 pm as many happy but tired students got to go home and sleep.

It started in the large meeting room where the organizers introduced themselves and the mentors and laid down the ground rules. There were more than 250 students there. at least 12 were from my school. It was crowded, somewhat crazy but exciting. Being the first Hackathon hosted by the sponsors, it was somewhat disorganized.

Team up and plan

There were roughly 10 mentors there (I was one of them). We were there to answer questions and help them with their problems all night.

After the grand meeting, it was bedlam as they formed into teams, of max 4 students and staked out areas to work in. Students were everywhere. They had the entire floor, offices included, to use. They settled in hallways, seating areas, corners and anywhere that they had electrical power and a little privacy.

Once introductions were made in the teams, they started brainstorming on what app they would do. Some teams had many ideas and had a hard time deciding what to do. With others, it was hard getting them to scale down their ideas into apps that could be done in the time allotted. For some, it took the entire afternoon just to come up with an app to do.

Meanwhile, there were sessions and workshops formed as needed on using Github, Android Studio, App Inventor, CSS and other topics.

Once they settled on an app, they got to work. Some of them got right to work programming, other groups took the time to storyboard the flow of the apps and divide up the tasks and time slots, carefully planning out the entire night.

Introducing LiveCode

Some of the students, who had no experience programming, were having trouble getting started. I introduced some of them to LiveCode and they decided to go with that. One group of three girls were especially interested in trying LiveCode. None of them had programmed before.

They worked all night. A few napped in their sleeping bags or on couches and makeshift beds. Most of them just worked straight through. The mentors were kept busy the entire night circulating around trying to help everyone, answering questions and helping with problems.

Come morning, some scaled back the scope of their apps as they realized they were too ambitious and would not finish in time. Others scrambled for new ideas as they abandoned their apps in search of easier ones or at least ones more doable.

Around 10 o'clock it was hectic as students scrambled to make what they had presentable and tidy up loose ends. They were also busy changing into their dress clothes and preparing for their presentations. They washed their faces in sinks in the bathrooms and grabbed a quick breakfast.

Presentations

Finally at 12:00 they eagerly waited until the judges came around to their area to look at their apps. The best 12 would be chosen to give formal presentations to the entire population there. As expected, most of the teams never finished. The next most common problem was deploying them to the devices or just getting the emulators working.

What They Made

My girls using LiveCode did well. One group did an app on shopping and being in style. It would recommend what was in style with teens and also most popular at the time and show you where to buy it at the best price. You choose a category or item (e.g. shoes) and it would go to the popular teen sites and see what is trending, then go to the shopping sites and see what of those are the best selling. It would then see where those items are for sale around you and compare prices. Finally it would then show you the pictures of them and where to get them around where you live. That way you would see what is currently in style and is hot among others your age (teens) and be able to get it at the best price.

Another group did an app that would find the best place to meet friends. You pick the people you would like to meet up with and it would find the best place to meet with them. It would determine their locations, calculate what was the middle of all of you ( so everyone had the same distance to go) and find the best place to meet based on your preferences (gym, fast food) and ratings of the places (Yelp, etc)

Another did an app where you entered your desired weight and time interval ( I.e. Lose 30 pounds in 2 months) and it helped you meet your goals with daily recommendations. It calculated how much you needed to lose by day and recommended what foods to eat for each meal (you were given choices for each meal - that was based on the # calories that you were limited to) and how active you needed to be ( based on your preferences ( biking, walking, jogging, etc). If you ate something different for a meal, it would adapt and change its recommendations for the rest of the day/week.

All of the teams using LiveCode did finish their apps. Like others, they ran into problems with the device emulators. I was proud that they all did finish their apps and they were good. The couple of teams that tried LiveCode for the first time and without any previous programming experience also finished their apps. And they learned it all on their own and using my website. I did no teaching of LiveCode the entire night. I was too busy helping students with other problems and answering technical questions. In fact, one of those teams (the three girls I mentioned earlier) actually wrote two apps!! They finished their first app and decided to do their runner-up choice as a second app.

Even though most teams did not win, the students left with the pride of competing and a great experience. As one girl said when I asked if she was disappointed in not winning, "Not at all, It was awesome".

Runner Up

A final note. One of my student's app was the runner-up app to the grand prize but it was not in LiveCode. His three, more experienced, teammates voted down doing it in LiveCode. He taught himself Objective C and actively did contribute to their app. I would like to think that his learning LiveCode contributed in some small way to his success. They have since been offered money and support for their app.

27.3% of participants
28% of mentors
50% of judges

...were women