Peach Tree Times

For the fifth consecutive year, a student from Carrollton High School has been selected as a winner in the 2022 Congressional App Challenge, an initiative of the U.S. House of Representatives to encourage middle and high school students to learn to code and consider pursuing careers in computer science. 

CHS junior Edward Kenyon won the 2022 U.S. Congressional App Challenge for his work creating College Cartographer.

Junior Edward Kenyon invented an app called College Cartographer to help students navigate critical college entrance information in Georgia. The app displays in-state tuition, out-of-state tuition, and SAT and ACT requirements. The app won the district contest sponsored by Rep. Drew Ferguson in Georgia’s Third District.

The Congressional App Challenge is an official initiative of the U.S. House of Representatives. Members of Congress host contests in their districts for middle school and high school students, encouraging them to learn to code and inspiring them to pursue careers in computer science. Each participating Member of Congress selects an app from their district, and each winning team is invited to showcase their app to Congress during our annual #HouseOfCode festival.

When asked what inspired the creation of College Cartographer, Edward said, ”My college search inspired me to create this app. During my search, I found that college information was often scattered across multiple websites and often convoluted. The combination of these factors made it very difficult and tedious to gather a full set of information about a prospective university. Because of this, I decided to create College Cartographer. I thought that by consolidating relevant college information into an intuitive source, I could help other students searching for and comparing universities.”

On winning the challenge, Edward said, "I am greatly honored to be the Congressional App Challenge winner from my district. It means a lot that I was able to put my computer science knowledge to use by creating an app that others judged useful."

The Congressional App Challenge smashed previous participation records in 2022. All told, 9,011 students registered for this year’s competition – creating 2,707 fully-functioning apps for 335 Members of Congress across 50 states, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Mariana Islands, American Samoa, and the District of Columbia. Additionally, this year’s competition set the record for most student registrations, most apps submitted, most apps per district submitted, and most districts receiving over 20 apps. The wildly successful competition continues to impress upon House members the importance of computer science education and the need to develop a diverse, domestic, STEM talent pipeline.

“I love the Congressional App Challenge because it emphasizes solving problems in your community,” said Robby Blakemore, CHS computer science teacher. “The College Cartographer app will be an incredible resource for many years.”

Blakemore said other CHS teams have created free apps available for download. To get started, search Trojan CS Apps in the Android and Apple app stores.

Original source can be found here.