This year, two teams of five young women will take on the Technovation Challenge to design and code a marketable app in a national competition.

Technovation Challenge was created by Iridescent Learning in 2010 with the goal of inspiring girls to become technological innovators in their communities and encourage young women to study and find careers in technology.

Piedmont High technology coordinator and computers teacher Jana Branisa said, “There’s a crisis in computer science education. In ten years there will be a huge shortage of people with the computer skills needed to get this country to the next level, especially women.”

Branisa is doing her part to increase interest in computers by bringing the Technovation Challenge to Piedmont High. Along with computers teacher Nathan Mattix and a mentor from the business world, Branisa will help the teams through the four-month process, which will require 60-100 hours of work from the girls.

“It’s not a light workload; it’s almost like another class,” said Branisa, “but it’s worthwhile.”

Last year’s national winners were one of four teams from Albany High School, who created an app called StudiCafé that features a virtual world with study tools like practice tests for various science subjects. Their app is currently being developed and will be available on the Android App Store.

Freshman Tina Lee, a Technovation competitor, said, “I wanted to join because I want to have something to remember and creating an app sounds really fun.”

The participating girls will gain knowledge beyond what is taught in The Joy of Computing, Computer Applications, or Web Design. Branisa said, “On the surface, it looks like young people know what they’re doing, but really they don’t necessarily know where all of the tools are or how things really work. I think there’s a lot of misperception about how much young people really know. There’s still a lot of learning that can happen.”

Another Technovation participant, sophomore Tiffany Zhou, said, “It sounded very exciting to get to learn how to design and market apps.” Zhou heard about the challenge during a computer science education day at UC Berkeley.

Branisa said, “We don’t know yet what the girls are going to develop, but it’s going to be very cool, very creative—several of the young women are artists. I’m hoping to take their creative know-how with their technical skill set and combine the two.”

According to Iridescent Learning’s website, competitors in 2013 will develop an app that solves a problem in their local community. This could be a health problem that affects their community, a social problem, or even a lack of a resource.

Zhou said, “We are planning to create a role-playing app, but we haven’t set a solid plan yet.”