New York Representative Paul Tonko announced the winners of this year’s Congressional App Challenge at Shaker High School on Monday.
Tonko, a Democrat from the 20th district, joined school administrators to honor three high school students from the North Colonie Central School district.
The team of Michael Tong, Ayush Patel and Kush Malwatkar created an app focused on increasing financial literacy. Tong, a senior, explains how IBUCK works.
“Introduces public terms that usually show up when you are trying to do some financial investment or involved in it,” Tong said. “So, you can get to high schoolers or people are interested a basic understanding of it. And then we involve multiple calculations calculators for estimated outcome. And so, people can go to approximate how much are they going to earn for return? And what are their risk and profits for the financial investments.”
Tong says the group was inspired after facing difficulties while making their own investments.
Patel, a junior, says given his video editing skills and his team’s programing and editing knowledge, he was excited to work together to develop something that could benefit others.
Patel says getting the web application together was a bit stressful.
“We did finish it up on the last day and we were getting down to like the last hour, almost at the end, because the video wasn't uploading and things like that,” Patel said.
Carmela Avellino, a AP Computer Science and Intro to Python teacher, says the students were practically independent when it came to the project.
“I present the app challenge every year in my class and I posted on Google Classroom, and I offered to help with them after school, but honestly, they never mentioned it again,” Avellino said. “So, they did everything on their own, all in their own free time.”
The contest is district-specific, which means a winner or winners are chosen within a district and their app is displayed nationally through the App Challenge’s website; no “overall” winner is selected.
The contest is meant to encourage students to get involved in STEM education programs like coding and computer science. Tonko, an engineer by training, says it gives him hope about the skilled workforce of the future.
“It's interesting to see that there's so much interest in STEM that these folks are totally uninhibited with their thinking,” Tonko said, “The sky is the limit.”
All members of the House can host a competition under the Congressional App Challenge and submit their winners to the broader contest.
Tonko sees the students’ submission as part of the region’s growing innovations in technology.
“To address financial literacy, in a compact of an app is a really clever and sensitive approach, I think,” Tonko said. “And so, all generations can use their advice and their app.”
Last year’s district winner was 11th-grader Robyn Wu from Emma Willard School, who created the website Vultures of Emma. It allows the school’s community to learn more about the birds that students frequently see soaring over the Troy campus.
