Terry T-Bird To Infinity wins Rep. Rick Crawford’s 2021 Congressional App Challenge in Arkansas’s First District
Rep. Rick Crawford has named Jerry Burton, Emily Byrd, Joseph Harvey, and Justin Coats of Cross County High School as the winners of the 2021 Congressional App Challenge in Arkansas’s First District.
When asked what inspired the creation of Terry T-Bird To Infinity, the students said, “The inspiration for our app first began in 5th grade, when one of our team members, Joseph Harvey, was struggling to pay attention in class. He yearned for a new, interactive way to learn and retain what he was taught. It was here when Joseph first conceptualized the idea of creating an educational game. 7 years later, while brainstorming around a table in EAST, Emily and Justin were doodling character designs when Emily made a passing comment about wanting to incorporate the designs into a game that she had been wanting to make for years. We collectively looked up at each other and had our very first aha! moment. The truth was all four of us, at one point in our lives, had a passion for creating an educational game. We may have not had the tools, resources, and skills in 5th grade, but we sure do now, so we got to work.”
The 2021 Congressional App Challenge yielded 2,101 fully functioning apps. After eighteen months of disruptions to educational cadences for students everywhere, the Congressional App Challenge came roaring back with 7,174 students registering for this year’s competition. All told, 340 Members of Congress hosted Congressional App Challenges in their districts across 50 states, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Mariana Islands, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Washington, D.C.
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, theCoderSchool, Facebook, Replit, Accenture, and others.
The 2022 Congressional App Challenge will launch in June of 2022, and eligible students can pre-register for the competition now.