John and the Congressional App Challenge

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A couple days ago, a friend texted the following photo to me and said, "Not sure if you've seen this, [my husband] saw it on the congressman's twitter feed."

Well, I hadn't seen it. I recognized some of the people in the photo:  a high school teacher, the high school principal, a blind boy I had seen around the school, and of course I recognized John. But the congressman? When had John met a congressman?  I had to do some asking to find out what it was all about. 

So there is this Congressional App Challenge, where students are encouraged to learn coding, and then winners are recognized by their congressmen. John wrote an app to help the internet be more accessible for blind people. It uses text-to-speech technology somehow, to describe what is on the screen. He has been working on it with the help of the blind boy in his coding club. Perhaps because he was the only student to submit an app in our district, he was recognized by Congressman Perlmutter. 

I wonder, though, when did he find out he was going to present his app to the congressman? Was he excited about it? Why didn't he mention it to his parents? Did he just forget? Or did he not think it was important enough to bring up? He's a crazy kid, but I love him!

Besides Congressman Perlmutter's twitter feed, he was also mentioned on the high school's STEM facebook page:


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