For the second year in a row, Newtown High School students earned top marks for a creation while attending the EdAdvance Skills21 Expo Fest at the Oakdale Theatre in Wallingford, held on June 1 this year.

According to its website, skills21.org/expofest, the “Expo Fest is a competition held annually in Connecticut in which high school students work in teams to design, develop, and implement an innovative product or solution to a given challenge.” NHS’s device earned first place in the “Computer Science Challenge 2” category, and the device was submitted as the “Wavecheck.”

The Computer Innovation Academy is a computer science program at NHS overseen by computer technology teacher Kristin Violette. Students were still thrilled on June 5 when reflecting on the accomplishment.

Student Sam Staubly explained the NHS group worked together ahead of the Expo Fest to create a wearable technology prototype to “sense UV rays, electromagnetic radiation, temperature, humidity, and gases” to connect to an Apple or Android phone with “real updates all of the time.”

This year’s Computer Innovation Academy computer science students included Dan Sibley, Elliot Lurie, Griffin Estes, Jackson Kennel, Lianna Perazzo, Sam Staubly, Youmeng Hin, Maddie Rooney, Garrett Marino, and Ardit Gjonbalaj. Not all of the students could attend the Expo Fest.

The group created the device to help people monitor sun exposure.

“We figured it would be good to tell people when they need to reapply sunscreen,” Sam explained, “and be prepared so they don’t get injured.”

According to Sam, the judges responded well to the device at the computer science expo, especially that it was a working prototype.

Sam hopes that if the group continues to work on the prototype it can make it smaller and easier to use, maybe as a clip-on device to attach to clothes.

Student Elliot Lurie added, “It was a pretty cool invention.”

The NHS students brought back an award — a What If? Computer Science Challenge first place trophy — for the school following the event.

“I thought it was really interesting to see all these people come together for the expo,” Lianna Perazzo said.

“I’ve never experienced a more rewarding feeling than going to expo and working on a project with this team in my entire high school career, and I think everyone should feel that,” Maddie Rooney reflected.

Last year’s NHS Computer Innovation Academy entry also earned first place at Expo Fest. Last year’s computer science students created an app that would allow students and parents to monitor where their school bus is on its route. The group also created a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) reader for buses that would work with the individual wearable devices. The app the group designed interacted with both pieces of technology to then share information about where the bus is in relation to the student or parent using the wearable device, as previously reported in The Newtown Bee.

This year’s students faced numerous challenges, including hectic schedules, according to Ms Violette. And yet, she said, “People really stepped up and took responsibility in their individual parts of the project.”

“Computer science education is crucial for today’s student,” said Ms Violette, adding later that no matter what field someone enters, “computer science is the basis of everything.”

Computer science, she said, teaches critical thinking and ways to find viable solutions.

NHS students can join the after school Computer Innovation Academy program in the fall or sign up to take it as a course next March, according to Ms Violette.