An app created by three students at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology to help children with autism could one day find its way into a special education classroom in Fairfax County.
Second graders Soham Jain, Rohan Kotla and Samvrit Rao are already recognition gained Presented to RoutineRemind by Rep. Jennifer Wexton (D-10). This is an app designed to help parents and children keep track of their schedules.
RoutineRemind is the winner of District 10 in the 2022 Congressional App Challenge, Wexton announced Dec. 22. This annual competition aims to encourage education in science, technology, engineering and mathematics by inviting students from around the country to develop and submit their own apps.
The 2022 contest will be 500+ Submissionsaccording to the organizers, a new record.
“I was impressed not only with their outstanding technical skills in designing this award-winning app, but also with their ingenuity and care in developing ways to support children with autism and their families.” Wexton said in a statement congratulating TJ students.
Congratulations #VA10Congress App Challenge Winners, Team RoutineRemind—Rohan, Samvrit, and Soham!
I am very impressed with the creation of a scheduling app that helps children with social and cognitive disabilities such as autism.
Bravo, Routine Remind! you make us proud pic.twitter.com/Q6stdx5rQ2
— Rep. Jennifer Wexton (@RepWexton) December 22, 2022
In a joint comment to FFXnow, Soham, Rohan and Samvit said they regularly collaborate on school projects and share an interest in “the intersection of computer science and biology.”
Seeing the challenge as an opportunity to test their technology and teamwork skills, the students turned to their personal experiences as they brainstormed app ideas.
In a demonstration video, Lohan said she has a younger brother with autism and has always been interested in finding ways to improve the lives of people with autism and other cognitive disabilities.
His older brother sometimes had trouble remembering his schedule and began asking for frequent reminders. Many people experience it, and it affects their ability to plan and concentrate.
“After researching communities with special needs, [our] We found this to be a common problem among autistic children, as many of them are very schedule-conscious,” the students told FFXnow. With this in mind, we wanted to develop a simple, adaptable, and user-friendly schedule and reminder app to help people with social and cognitive disabilities.”
According to the team, RoutineRemind allows parents to upload an audio recording of their child’s schedule each day so they can check the app when they have questions. Recordings are tagged with keywords to help users find specific reminders easily.
To search for an entry, the user presses the “Record” button in the app and asks a question. The app uses voice recognition technology to register keywords used and pull relevant recordings.
“Not only can the schedule be edited throughout the day, it can be easily shared with all caregivers associated with the student,” said the team. “Additionally, children will now be able to hear their schedules in their parents’ voices, which is comforting and reassuring for kids on the spectrum. Currently, there is no Reminder His app with this.”
With so much competition, students say they were surprised to learn that RoutineRemind ranked among the top apps in Virginia’s 10th District on Dec. 13. According to Wexton’s office, the school district received 25 submissions from her 44 students.
A week later, Wexton said in a Zoom call that they had won.
All district winners will have their app displayed on the US Capitol and House of Representatives websites for one year. You will also be invited to a reception at the House of Code to demonstrate the app to other coders and members of parliament. This year’s event will take place on Capitol Hill on his April 20-22.
Team RoutineRemind is thrilled to attend the “new national science fair” invited by Congress’ App Challenge, but whose goal is to develop apps so they can help real people. said.
Students are working on fixing bugs and improving features such as speech recognition models and speech-to-text algorithms.
“In doing so, we aim to significantly improve the user experience and make the app more accessible to our target audience,” they said.
Once the issue is resolved, the app will be made available for download and will be pilot tested in a few special education classrooms in Fairfax County. They also hope to eventually expand to older people, especially those experiencing Alzheimer’s disease and memory loss.
“We plan to collect feedback from local senior living centers and further modify the app accordingly,” said the students.
