A team of high schoolers won the 2015 Verizon Innovative App Challenge. This culminated in a visit to the White House for the 2015 Science Fair. The app is designed to help teenagers deal with the stress and depression of being a teenager.
I found this story interesting for a lot of reasons. That app development is considered STEM, that app development is so easy that a group of high-schoolers can do it, that app development is so powerful that anyone can make something that may change the world, that mobile apps continue to become all things to all people. It seems that, instead of books, essays, poetry, etc, a mobile app is now the way to connect and reach everyone.
Sometimes I am simply amazed at how in such a short time, the world has become so ubiquitously connected.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 25 2015, @10:40AM
Science Fair standards haven't changed in decades. Projects involving computers don't have to be rigorous experiments employing the scientific method correctly. Just making something amusing happen on a computer is sufficient. Considering that anyone can make an "app" today using web based frameworks and without even knowing a programming language, the standards really should be raised.