Technovation Challenge
Congrats to our winners from the LinkedIn site!
A huge thanks to LinkedIn for hosting the program and to Microsoft for hosting Pitch Day!
1st place: Team 2—Niffler App by Chameleon Labs (Monta Vista High School)
The Niffler app was created to help students learn difficult concepts. Students are often required to learn a lot of material in depth in a relatively short period of time. It is difficult for students to thoroughly understand abstract, complicated concepts in such a limited amount of time. Chameleon Labs believes that every student has the potential to excel, as long as he or she is given the time to understand and internalize the concepts. The Niffler app addresses this problem with a simple but effective solution: learning through games. Young people are attracted to gaming. Trying to memorize flashcards is a boring and ineffective way of studying. Gaming is both effective and fun. The Niffler App: Chemical Compounds allows students to learn the chemical formulas for chemical compounds, like table salt. The user will be presented with a task such as, “Form table salt,” after which the user must catch the corresponding ions. In this case, the user would catch the following ions: Na+ and Cl- into the bucket at the bottom of the screen.
2nd place: Team 1—Chompound App (Monta Vista High School)
To solve the problem of memorizing long chemical compounds, we have developed a mobile application called Chompound, a science education app catering towards high school Chemistry students to solve this problem. Various studies have shown that entertainment and fun are an important part of the learning process. Our app is a fun game that focuses on interaction between the phone and user. Chompound provides the user with a list of compounds to select from, and then creates a game in which users stack elements on our lovable creature, Chompy, in order to form the specified compound. Students earn points by forming more compounds, but lose points for catching the wrong elements. Chompound enables users to learn required material, while maintaining a fun and interactive environment. It also helps students by bridging the gap between fun and education. In addition, Chompound is mobile so students can study on-the‐go, a useful characteristic since it conforms to the busy schedules of many students.
3rd place: Team 5-SOS App (Eastside Prep)
S.O.S is a mobile gaming app designed to allow you to learn about endangered animals and donate in game currency to your choice of animal protective program. S.O.S a fun game that is in trivia form where you see a picture of an animal and choose between “Endangered” or “Exists”. The user receives game currency that later can be used to donate to a specific program. Not only will the buyer help the community but they will also become more knowledgeable about the animals that are extinct or endangered by the facts they learn from answering the questions.
