Foshay Tech Students take 2nd and 3rd Place at WeHack2016 -
The Foshay Tech Students participated in the WeHack/Southeast Cities Hackathon. They took home 2nd and 3rd place in addition to building their networking, communication, and programming skills. The Foshay students comprised four of the seven high school teams that presented their solution for some of the toughest civic problems that residents face every day.
After spending all day Saturday brushing up on programming and brainstorming ideas the students formed teams and worked with mentors from Sabio, a company that cultivates tech talent and planned the Hackathon.
The third place team, Fem Tech, was comprised of eight students who founded a coding club on Foshay’s campus that encourages women to code. They recently earned a Girls’ Build LA grant to plan activities to attract the interest of middle school girls into the fields of computer science and they presented their plans to the judges. Fem Tech gained the interest of Microsoft who donated interactive circuit boards and wants to create a webseries based on their girl centered tech events. The Fem Tech members are Valerie Nerio (President), Victoria Lopez, Diana Orellana, Adamaris Maldonado, Samantha Suarez, Luis Navarro, Angelica Vasquez and Gabriel Juarez.
The second place team won $500 for their Green Home app, a program that will sense when electricity is on at home and will create a notification to turn it off. The team was comprised of three 10th graders and one junior who came together on the spot. Their success can be credited to the time they devoted at the Hackathon and their work with mentors who helped them practice their presentation no less than 15 times. The te.am members are Henry Aviles, Megan Dotson, Brenda Pulido and 11th grader Kimberly Zamora
A hackathon (also known as a hack day, hackfest or codefest) is an event in which computer programmers, and others involved in software development and hardware development, including graphic designers, interface designers and project managers, collaborate intensively on software projects.
In total 17 students participated in the event and each one of them made an impression on the judges, mentors and sponsors.