A team of three girls from Kasson-Mantorville Middle School became one of four teams that qualified to compete in the annual international Technovation Challenge finals in San Francisco on June 25.
Rylee Melius, Lydia Mindermann, and Andrea Richard, all seventh graders, comprised one of three teams of middle and high school girls from the Rochester area that competed on May 3 at the second annual TechnovationMN "Appapalooza" at the Minneapolis Convention Center.
The team's app is called "Mayo Freetime" and is intended to help Mayo patients from outside of Rochester find their way around the area between medical appointments and chat with others who are in similar situations.
Each team had seven minutes during the Appapalooza to pitch a cell phone app of their own development. The winning team will receive $10,000 to take its app to market.
The other two teams from southeastern Minnesota represented St. Francis Catholic grade school in Rochester and the local chapter of the Black Data Processing Associates, which won an award for "Best Pitch."
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The team is sponsored at the middle school by teacher Sharie Furst and is mentored by Kris Kendall, an IBM employee. A video of the K-M girls explaining their app is now on the home page on technovationchallenge.org.
The International Technovation Challenge is a computer coding competition for girls. The Technovation Challenge originated in 2009 but has only been organized in Minnesota for two years.
