Paws to Learn wins Rep. Debbie Dingell’s 2022 Congressional App Challenge in Michigan’s 12th District
Rep. Debbie Dingell has named Julia Mei, a 12th Grader at Skyline High School, as the winner of the 2022 Congressional App Challenge in Michigan’s 12th District.
When asked what inspired the creation of Paws to Learn, the student said, ”As a shelter volunteer and cat-owner, I understand the importance of accurately reading the behavior of animals and respecting their boundaries. Being able to interpret animal cues helps greatly in pinpointing ways to improve the animals’ health and reduce their stress. With this goal in mind, I wanted to create an easy way to learn about this topic if people are new or refresh their knowledge if people are familiar with the topic. Either way, I hope that this app will encourage people to further care for animal welfare as they “paws” to learn.”
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. 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 pipeline of diverse, domestic STEM talent.
The Congressional App Challenge is an official initiative of the U.S. House of Representatives, where 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 a winning app from their district, and each winning team is invited to showcase their winning app to Congress during our annual #HouseOfCode festival. The program is a public-private partnership made possible through funding from Omidyar Network, AWS, Rise, theCoderSchool, Apple, and others.
The 2023 Congressional App Challenge will launch in June of 2023, and eligible students can pre-register for the competition now.