Students Design Digital Solutions to Address Cybersecurity and Climate Change During App-A-Thon Competition

Nearly 40 students from Montgomery Middle School turned their innovative ideas into digital reality at the Linda Vista Innovation Center’s first Global Challenges, Local Solutions App-a-Thon competition.

The 7th-grade students teamed up to design apps that help solve issues surrounding cybersecurity and global climate change. The winning team went home with a trophy, bragging rights amongst their friends, and perhaps most importantly, the beginnings of a digital solution that might just change the world.

Hosted in partnership with Scoutlier and ServiceNow, the competition gave students a unique, interactive peek into the world of app development and artificial intelligence.

The Linda Vista Innovation Center is a unique campus run by the San Diego County Office of Education (SDCOE), where students can explore, create, and learn about in-demand careers in high-priority sectors in the region through hands-on interactive educational experiences.

The Linda Vista Innovation Center connects students to these career paths, and the real-world problems these industries face, by partnering with top companies and organizations representing these sectors.

The app-a-thon competition was brought together through a partnership with Scoutlier, a digital learning platform dedicated to expanding access and engagement for students and teachers, and ServiceNow, an artificial intelligence-driven cloud computing platform that specializes in digital workflows and automation.

Both companies came together to lead the students through the different stages of the competition, with representatives from each organization working directly with students as they brainstormed ideas for the app, created a workflow, put together a marketing slide deck, and finally pitched their app to their peers.

The top app in the competition was SS VPN, an AI-powered virtual private network that was designed to run in the background of a device and protect users’ personal data while browsing online. Other popular apps designed during the competition helped users find recycling centers by scanning the barcodes on recyclable materials, or created a point-earning system where scanning collected litter would earn users credits to go toward planting trees.

“These students are going through the real deal in developing an app,” said Beth Price, instructional design lead for Scoutlier. “This competition is not only a highly engaging and interesting method of getting students to listen and interact, it’s also exposing them to a real job they can do in the future.”

With demand for application developers projected to increase in the future, competitions like the app-a-thon give students of all backgrounds and interests a unique opportunity to apply their skills to solve real-world problems.

“This is an opportunity to break down some of the perceived barriers students may have around entering the tech industry someday,” said Price. “We often hear students say they didn’t think they’d ever work in tech because they thought they had to be ‘super smart’ but that’s really not the case. Anyone can work in this field, and it can be a lucrative career opportunity.”

By connecting students with real-world challenges, and giving them the tools and space to develop their own solutions to these challenges, the Linda Vista Innovation Center provides a unique opportunity for students to explore high-paying, in-demand careers, and aims to drive homegrown talent to meet future regional workforce needs.

Learn more about College and Career Readiness.