Launch

Inspiration

Within a single city, funding for public schools can differ by a factor of up to 400%. For many low-resource and minority communities, the lack of funding prevents students from exploring different disciplines and finding their passion.

What it does

We provide dedicated mentors from the industry to low-resource middle schools (Grades 6th-8th) who run an after-school program which teaches the basics of problem solving, algorithmic thinking and design practice. Launch is not the average STEM curriculum. It covers a wide range of topics from coding to creativity practice. Activities are hands on and instill crucial critical thinking skills in students. Students are presented with real world problems and are forced to think outside of the box to develop solutions.

How we built it

We used Figma to develop the prototype for the website and Adobe Illustrator to create the logo and icons.

Challenges we ran into

We had difficulty at the beginning trying to decide what we should do for our project. Each of us had several ideas, so we collaborated and combined our ideas to create Launch! Under time constraints, we weren't able to implement every idea that we had. Instead, we narrowed it down to include the most important parts.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of the message of our organization and tackling an issue that is prevalent in our community. Being from Seattle, some of us have experienced this disparity in public school education, so it is something that we are all proud of acknowledging and spreading awareness. Furthermore, this is one of the first hackathons for many in our group, so it has been a really great learning experience.

What we learned

We learned how to work as a cohesive group in a time pressure situation. This included having good communication, because we would be working on different parts at the same time. Most importantly, we learned how to apply our skills to real-life situations and come up with though-out solutions that can have an impact in our community.

What's next for Launch

We would love to plan out actual lesson plans that could be implemented in a real classroom setting with topics covering anything from UX/UI design to learning basic programming skills. Overall, we just want young students to have the ability to explore these topics and to learn how to be both creative and innovative.