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| Apex students experiment with new Lenovo tablets while attending the press conference in the media center. |
Emily Lindesmith
Editor-in-Chief
The National Academy Foundation
(NAF) and Lenovo have selected Apex High School’s Academy of Information Technology
(AOIT) as one of five schools across the country to pilot a mobile application
development program. North Carolina Governor Bev Perdue attended a press
conference at Apex High on January 23 to congratulate students, staff and
administration on the new program, which will allow selected students to
develop apps for the Android operating system as well as a marketing plan.
Along with the Governor, Apex Mayor
Keith Weatherly and Wake County School System Superintendent Tony Tata attended
the conference. Tata stated that the Lenovo-NAF program is a “significant
event” that is “groundbreaking.”
“I was tickled when I learned that N.C. was one
of the five sites,” said Governor Purdue She took a moment to introduce her N.C.
Career and College Promise as well as the STEM program. The college promise
provides high schoolers the opportunity to earn college credit before
graduating. She believes that Lenovo is a crucial key in furthering the STEM
program which places emphasis on science, technology, engineering, and math.
She hopes the new Lenovo-NAF program will help students “to land high paying,
21st century jobs.”
Lenovo Vice President Tom Looney
hopes the partnership with NAF, MIT, and CMU will offer a “new and energizing
technology” curriculum. NAF Senior Vice President David Moore adds, “We can’t
teach kids the same old way.” The partnership will provide innovative ideas for
instruction.
Julie Oster, AOIT Director, is
spearheading the “out of school time” program. For twelve weeks after school
AOIT students will work in groups to develop an Android mobile application and
a business plan to market the application. The app can be created on anything
and the best project from Apex will be presented at the annual NAF conference.
According to Lenovo “this
multidisciplinary, project-based course is intended to develop entrepreneurship,
marketing, collaboration and technical skills.” Oster adds that she is “hoping
it will open doors to internships.” A compensated internship is a requirement
of the AOIT program. Through the program Oster wants the students to “learn
what they really like to do or what they don’t like so they can make a change.”
Junior LeeAnn Moffitt is excited
about the program because “I’m going to be learning new techniques, programs,
and programming styles.” Moffitt has taken the programming path of the AOIT
curriculum. Moffitt notes that the programming pathway “allows you to make
games people can really use”. Junior John Boezman has experience programming
for Android and is looking forward to the “real world experience of working in
a team and learning how to do all the marketing elements such as finding a good
target audience.”
Apex was selected for the program
due to its diverse population, resources and interest in science, technology,
engineering, and math. To implement the curriculum, Lenovo has given Apex
technology products including 30 Android-based ThinkPad Tablets and large format
ThinkCentre HD All-in-One desktop PCs. Lenovo has invested more than
$200,000 and plans to integrate the program as a course for NAF IT Academies in
the 2012-2013 school year.
