Education

Sacajawea Students earn top prize for smartphone app idea

Posted: Mar 5, 2013 5:50 PM by Adam Bell
Updated: Mar 5, 2013 5:54 PM

A challenge put on by the Verizon Foundation puts a Bozeman Middle School in the running for the top prize of 10-thousand dollars.

The challenge was to design a smartphone application that addresses the needs of the community. And for 8 Sacajawea Middle School Students, they did just that, earning them top middle school in the state.

"Well we have a lot of avalanches in our community, and it's a big problem, so we wanted to do a thing on avalanches, but we realized that people don't pull out their phone and say 'what do I do? an avalanche is hitting me!' so we kind of expanded the idea and went with all the natural disasters," says 6th grader Anna Riek.

For several weeks these middle school students worked together to come up with a unique idea for a smartphone app, a process they found challenging at times.
7th grader Sage Heroux agrees saying "I think narrowing down the possibilities for topics," was one of the more challenging tasks.
6th grader Brendan Hayes adds "We had to all kind of cooperate with each other."

By working together, these students created an idea that helped push them to the number one middle school spot in the state.

6th grader Doha Maaty says "We were really excited, because we had all worked hard on it."
"We were all really surprised and really happy," adds 6th grader Maya Priebe.
6th grader Emma Cotterel was excited adding "We tried something new, and we like did really well, we went up and beyond."
Jovial Milich is looking forward hoping for a national award, saying "If we win national, then it would be really cool to be able to design the app."

The students' are anxiously awaiting for March 18th, the date the announcement will come down for the top 5 middle schools and top 5 high schools across the country. Those schools will earn a $10,000 grant to help design the app along with a tablet for each team member.