Bartlett Academy students develop winning technology

A team of freshmen students in Bartlett High School's Science, Engineering and Technology Academy earned state and Midwest regional honors in the Verizon Innovative App Challenge.

Their winning concept Fittastick is a fitness application that uses social media to motivate users to exercise and eat healthy. The students won a $5,000 grant to help enhance STEM education at Bartlett High School.

The students will have the opportunity to work with Massachusetts Institute of Technology to make their application a reality.

According to Bartlett Academy Teacher Philip Church, Fittastick utilizes social networking to show users how their friends are doing in comparison to them, motivating them while tracking both food intake and exercise to show the user how many net calories they have gained or lost every day. The application allows users to view how much weight they might lose or gain over a long period of time through projections based on daily calorie intake and loss.

Forty-seven Bartlett High School Academy freshmen competed in the Verizon Application Challenge. Middle and high school students from across the nation participated in the Verizon Innovative App Challenge. The winning team includes: Aishwarya Jois, Amar Patel, Autumn Chung, Ivana Bozic, Purav Shah and Shil Shah.

"It was great to see the students apply the concepts of thermodynamic energy transfer into their application and transform their knowledge into a healthy living technology application," said Church. "These real world applications really open students' eyes to the importance of what they are learning and bring their classroom lessons to life."