Maria Montero is a STEM education champion and serves as the assistant principal at Mater Academy Charter Middle/High School in Hialeah Gardens, Florida.
Mrs. Davalos' PLTW Gateway students worked hard all last school year, and that hard work paid off.
In front of 100 peers, two dozen parents, four school administrators, and six distinguished judges, these students showed off a year's worth of coding and programming knowledge.
Mirroring ABC's hit show "Shark Tank," each team of students presented their best app to a panel of judges made up of PLTW guests, school administrators, community sponsors, and IT experts. Their goal: convince the judges (a.k.a. the Sharks) that their app should represent our school in the Congressional App Challenge.
Dressed for success and armed with tablets, props, and presentations, these students impressed us all.
In the end, the convenient errand-assistant app called NIFTY – created by 7th graders Adonis Serrano and Michael McWhorter – stole the show. Following closely behind was the car-finding app NAVICATE – created by 6th grader Austin Alfonso – which is now available on the Google Play Store.
The future looks bright for these budding coders, and we couldn't be prouder!
PLTW’s blog is intended to serve as a forum for ideas and perspectives from across our network. The opinions expressed are those of each guest author.