Gulliver Prep Students Win Congressional Challenge | PLTW

Students at Gulliver Preparatory School in Miami, Florida, had much to celebrate during Computer Science Education Week (CSEdWeek) earlier this month.

PLTW students Jake Seymour, Sebastian Quintero, Ishan Shah, Matthew Garcia, Ryan Costa, and Daniel Fleites-Cruz won the 2018 Congressional App Challenge, marking the third straight year Gulliver has won its district's challenge.

They won for their app called Kickstart, an online educational platform that aims to give all students in Miami-Dade County the opportunity to expand their knowledge in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) areas.

As part of the celebration, the students attended the Congressional App Challenge ceremony at the office of U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.

Two other Gulliver Prep teams also received recognition:

• Team Which Witch earned second place for its efforts to help English Language Learners better differentiate between homophones – words that sound the same but have different meanings.
• Team MöbiusML earned third place for its efforts to facilitate mobility of wheelchair-bound users through the use of facial recognition and machine learning.

Other PLTW Computer Science students at Gulliver Prep celebrated CSEdWeek by presenting at computer science fairs held at Yale University and Harvard University – with a tour of Massachusetts Institute of Technology in between.

“The trip to Yale, MIT, and Harvard served as an opportunity for our students to get valuable, constructive feedback on their programming projects, while networking with other computer science students as well as professionals from the world's top technology companies,” says Dean Morell, a PLTW Computer Science teacher at Gulliver Prep.

He continues, “The work is not over for these amazing students. They will continue to enhance their programming skills while completing their service learning through the implementation of these wonderful apps."