Congressional App Challenge

The Congressional App Challenge is a competition aimed at encouraging U.S. high school students to learn how to code by creating their own applications. The Challenge is intended to highlight the value of computer science and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) education and encourage students to engage in these fields. By encouraging and recognizing our nation’s young programming talent, I hope we can shine a light on the growing importance of these skills and focus on STEM Education.

The Congressional App Challenge will last from November 9, 2015 through January 15, 2016, and is open to all U.S. high school students in participating districts. Challenge participants are invited, either as individuals or as teams, to create and submit their own software application (“app”) for mobile, tablet, or other computing devices on a platform of their choice. A panel of local computer science professionals and congressional representatives will judge the apps, and the winners in each district will have the honor of being recognized by their Congressional representative.

If you’re a student interested in participating in the 2015 Congressional App Challenge, this page will give you all the information you need to started:

Step 1: Check Your Eligibility

To be eligible to participate in the Congressional App Challenge, you must fulfill the following requirements:

• You must reside or attend school in Ohio's 14th Congressional District. (You can see which district you live in here.)
• You must be 13 years of age by or on November 9, 2015.
• You must be eligible to attend high school in OH-14. (If you attend school in a different district than the one in which you reside, you may compete in either district, but you may only submit an app in one district.)
• If you are competing in a team: at least two of the students in your team must reside or attend high school in the district in which you are competing.

Step 2: Register on Challenge.gov

• Challenge.gov is the platform that hosts our app submissions. Though you can see all the challenges that are posted on Challenge.gov without registering, you must actually register in order to submit your own app. The registration process should only take 2 or 3 minutes.
• The OH-14 Challenge Page is here.
   

Step 3: CREATE!

• Once you’re all signed up, you can move ahead with creating your app! The specific details about what type of apps you can create can be found on your district’s Challenge.gov page. If you want some help getting started, you can check out our resources page, here.
• The sky is the limit in what kind of app you create!
   

Step 4: Submit Your App

• Once your app is done, you can submit it on your district’s page on challenge.gov.
• You can submit your app any time from November 9th, 2015 until midnight EST, January 15, 2016.
• The judging period will last from January 15 – February 15, 2016. After that, the winners will be announced, and honored by Rep. Joyce. 
• Winners will have their apps featured on a display in the Capitol Building as well as on the Congressional App Challenge website.
   

Step 6: Fill out the exit form on CongressionalAppChallenge.US

• After you’ve submitted your app on challenge.gov, we’ll email you a final questionnaire. This brief questionnaire is the final step required for your submission to be complete.
• Important note: We collect information from you to verify that you’re eligible to participate, and to understand what type of students are participating. We will never sell or rent this information.
• If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Rhianon Anderson at randerson@congressionalappchallenge.us