A team from Newtown High School took home two awards after the virtual 2021 Expo Fest awards ceremony on May 27.

The team took part in the Skills21 at EdAdvance 2021 Expo Fest under the guidance of NHS computer science teacher Kristin Violette.

Expo Fest is held annually in Connecticut for high school student teams to design, develop, and implement products or solutions to given challenges.

Students who participated on NHS’s team this year were Jackson Baimel, Anthony Crisci, Juan Mendez, Julia Scataglini, Melissa Schnee, Sam Staubly, Nick Tetreault, and Steve Weingart.

While waiting for the virtual awards announcement, Juan explained the NHS group made a phone app that the students named “Sprout.”

“You would scan text book pages with the phone app,” said Juan. “What Sprout would do is it would take out key information and present you tons of relevant resources related to the content on the page... It also does other tools, like it makes notes based on the content of the page that are configurable and it can make practice quizzes based on those notes.”

It also involves interactive augmented reality models users can “play around with” on their phones, according to Juan.

Juan said the app helps build comprehension around a given subject.

The team’s slogan was “growing your knowledge” and “Sprout” was chosen as the name based around that concept, according to the group.

Sam was the lead designer and he built a prototype.

“Our future goals for the project are to improve the user interface using augmented reality features, and improve the algorithms which run the app to make the experience more seamless,” said Sam, in a recent e-mail.

Sam also explained the prototype was created for Android phones.

“I really enjoyed working with the team despite the challenges of being online rather than in person, and am very proud of the work that we managed to accomplish. It’s an awesome feeling to see all the hard work that we put in pay off in the end,” said Sam.

In the classroom on May 27, members of the team watched as the virtual 2021 Expo Fest awards ceremony continued its announcements.

The group also hopes the technology can be applied in other ways in the future, according to Juan.

“This is an idea that can be expanded for a lot of things,” said Juan.

Finally the first category NHS was in was announced, and the group took first place.

The NHS team, calling themselves “Byte Sized Cookies,” earned first place in the Computer Science Challenge category. The team also won the special ARX (Augmented Reality) award.

It was the second year in a row NHS’s team took home first prize in the Computer Science Challenge category. Last year’s team also earned first place in the Best Overall category.

And the wall outside Ms Violette’s classroom at NHS is proof the high school’s team has been earning recognition from the annual event for years, as plaques are hung on display for all to see as they walk by.

Eliza Hallabeck can be reached at eliza@thebee.com.