SOUTHFIELD, MI – Two groups of students from Troy High School in Oakland County and Portage Central Middle School in Kalamazoo County have been developing an innovative idea for a mobile application that would make a difference.

These schools are the newly announced Best in State Contest winners for Michigan in the Verizon Innovative App Challenge. The competition was created by the Verizon Foundation in partnership with the Technology Student Association to encourage students to use technology to help solve local social issues with their Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) skills.

A diverse set of student teams from across the nation submitted more than 770 app concepts, which made selecting one winning middle school team and one winning high school team from each state highly competitive. Almost 40 percent of submitted entries were from underserved schools. The number of applicants shows the growing interest in hands-on STEM learning programs, but is also a testament to the large success of this program. Since 2000, the Verizon foundation has invested more than $300 million to support various STEM education initiatives that are focused on improving the teaching and learning experience with mobile technologies.

These teams focused on health and the environment as a basis for their app design. The Troy High School team designed an app that will provide details on food nutritional values to allow people to maker smarter, healthier food choices called “OptimalForage”. While the Portage Central Middle School team designed the “EneRoute” app that creates the most safe, fast, energy efficient bus routes to and from schools. As the competition progresses, the teams will start to bring their application ideas to life and can also win thousands of dollars in grants for their schools. In the final round, students even get Samsung Galaxy Note Tablet’s for application development and testing.

?We saw some fantastic creativity and innovation in the first Innovative App Challenge last year, and this second competition is shaping up to be similarly exciting,? said John Granby, president?Michigan/Indiana/Kentucky Region, Verizon Wireless. ?It is delightful to see children as young as sixth graders identifying problems and conceptualizing solutions that can be developed into a usable app.?

The program allows the top teams to dive deeper by providing STEM learning along the way with app-development courses created by the MIT Media Lab?s App Inventor team and additional learning tools. The course will teach the teams how to take their apps from concept to completed, user-test app, under the direction of each team?s faculty advisor. The program also provides the advisors and colleagues of the winning teams with a free online course called ?Teaching App Creation with MIT App Inventor,? taught by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab?s Center for Mobile Learning?s app development experts. In addition, the MIT Media Lab?s Center for Mobile Learning will provide onsite and virtual training on coding and support as the teams develop their apps. One avenue for students to share their apps will be the Google Play store, but the opportunities could be endless for these lucky students.

Troy High and Portage Central Middle School teams were chosen from nearly 1,300 teams nationwide who entered the contest. They are two of 80 Best in State teams that will go on to vie for the titles of Best in Region, and go for the title of Best in Nation in the next rounds. In the final round, the members of the eight winning Regional teams will be invited to present their apps in person ? on their new tablets ? at the 2014 National TSA Conference in Washington, D.C., courtesy of Verizon. The hands-on STEM learning experience around application development and the ability to bring their dreams alive will be an unforgettable experience for these youths.

Get the entire United States Best in State Round 1 winners of the 2014 Verizon Innovative App Challenge and more information about the contest Here

Associate Editor Nicole Johnson leads MITechNews.Com?s efforts to foster STEM education, as well as provide coverage for her fellow women in computing. If you have a story idea for Nicole, email [email protected]