The Congressional App Challenge program, hosted by the members of the U.S. House of Representatives, encourages middle school and high school students to create and submit their original apps that solve a district-specific problem. Students can use Python, JavaScript, or any other programming languages to build the apps. The winning apps will be displayed in the US Capitol Building and featured on the House of Representatives’ website.
Note - Congressional App Challenge opens around summer each year and ends October / November. So we only run these mentoring classes July - October. If you are interested in this excellent challenge, we recommend taking one or more of following classes first so you have the core coding skills to build the apps - Mobile Coding for Apps and Games, Python for AI, or Build Your Web with HTML/CSS/Javascript.
The Congressional App Challenge is a great way to apply what you have learned in coding to highlight and solve real world problems. Any student in middle school or highschool can submit projects, as long as your congressional district participates (check here to see if your district is part of it).
Eager to join but don’t know what project to build and how to complete it end to end? To help more students participate, we are running several groups of mentoring classes. Some groups will support students who want to develop their apps in HTML/CSS/Javascript, and the rest are for students who will be creating mobile apps using Thunkable.
Each group will meet for 5 sessions with 1 session per week. We will bring students through the entire process of identifying real world problems, designing the overall app, planning out the steps, and building the app step by step. Our teacher will also help students resolve any coding challenges they might run into during the development process. We estimate students will need to spend 2-3 hours a week to build the app outside of the class to complete a medium level difficulty project in 5 weeks. Check out projects by 2020 winners as references.
Please note that you need to have learned HTML/CSS/Javascript or Thunkable to join these mentoring classes. Read FAQ at the bottom of the page for more details.
Sign up today to start building your app!