Mrs. Pintu Thaker’s Meadowcreek High School app teams are winners
With teacher Mrs. Pintu Thaker, Meadowcreek High School’s team “Legacy” members Jun (Wen) Cai, Rodrigo Toledo, Adarsh Patel, and Jose Guzman display their 2d place win for their stop smoking app at Georgia’s TAG-Ed Health IT Leadership Summit.
Mrs. Pintu Thaker’s Health IT team “Legacy” (Adarsh Patel, Jose Guzman, Jun (Wen) Cai, Rodrigo Toledo) placed 2nd in Georgia for the Student Innovation Award at the TAG-Ed Health IT Leadership Summit held by TAG Education Collaboration, Georgia Department of Public Health, and Georgia Department of Education.
For the summit’s projects, Health, Business, and Computer Science students design mobile applications that promote lifelong wellness through fitness and nutrition choices. This year’s challenge focused on prevention and cessation of youth smoking.
The team’s “Stop It” uses statistics, images, and testimonials (written and/or video). In the fall, these four students were selected as finalists, winning a cash prize for their school. They then presented their app to summit attendees, spoke face to face with many professionals from the health industry to promote their app, and placed 2nd in the state.
Meadowcreek High School Mrs. Pintu Thaker’s Team Legacy (Rodrigo Toledo, Jun (Wen) Cai, Adarsh Patel, and Jose Guzman) display their mobile app “Stop It” (to help teens stop smoking) which won 2d place in Georgia’s TAG-Ed Health IT Leadership Summit.
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The Verizon Innovative App Challenge is a collaborative competition for middle and high school students, which ignites interest in STEM through an empowering learning experience. This challenge focuses on Education, Healthcare, or Sustainability. Mrs. Thaker’s team “The Ottomans” went from winning Best in State to Best in the Southeast Region, and were finalists for the national title.
The "Ottomans" shake their phones to activate a feature on their winning Teen Fitness app.
The team’s project on Teen Fitness addresses the issue of physical inactivity. Teens using the app can not only personalize their workout routine but also calculate running pace, cycling speed, route distance, and calorie burn for any fitness activity. A special feature called Fitness Buddy brings social networking into real space: shake the phone and it pinpoints other nearby users who might chat or even work out with you. Socializing and exercising, too—what could be better? Menus for nearby healthy restaurants also help hungry teens.
Meadowcreek High School’s team “The Ottomans” show their Best in State award for their teen fitness app: Front row, Mrs. Pintu Thaker, Biridiana Macias, Plabani Sharif; Back row, Hong Wang, Avneet Sethi, Brenda Gutierrez, and Christopher Parungao.
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Mrs. Thaker has been at Meadowcreek High School for 11 years, where she teaches Web and Digital Media Pathway and Computer Science Principles. She also works with FBLA (Future Business Leaders of America) in one of the very successful chapters in Gwinnett County. Her goal is to prepare students for college and career by teaching them soft skills (teamwork, time management, communication, positive attitude, literacy, technology, etc.), and her students have been consistently winning in web and app competitions for the last 8 to 9 years.
Mrs. Thaker has also recently been nominated for Georgia Association for Career & Technical Education's 2015 GACTE Teacher of the Year, since her students from Meadowcreek High School are consistently among the best, finishing as finalists and winners in every GACTE contest in the last several years—rarely the same students, but always from Meadowcreek High School! By helping her students develop skills that will be the future in our workforce, this very quiet soft-spoken woman with determination and heart lets her students see and want to be sure they do their best for her, because she gives her best to them.
Website Bonus Feature
For Team “Legacy” and their “Stop IT” project
Video:
http://goo.gl/Mr72wF
For Team “The Ottomans” and their “Teen Fitness” project
Videos:
1) “Meadow Creek Fitness APP”
http://www.wsbtv.com/videos/news/meadow-creek-fitness-app/vDFX36/
2) “Students develop new fitness app” by Ron Gant, Good Day Atlanta anchor.
Some tech minded students in Gwinnett County have developed a fitness app, that's taking them on quite a journey! FOX 5's Ron Gant caught up with students, who get much more than the basic math and English courses you remember from high school.
http://www.myfoxatlanta.com/clip/11069923/students-develop-new-fitness-app
3) “Verizon APP Challenge - Team: The Ottomans” by Hong Wang.
Uploaded on Nov 24, 2014
Teen Fitness Verizon App Challenge
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igDItwoHl_c&feature=youtu.be
Link:
“Gwinnett students win app competition”
9:08 a.m. Monday, Jan. 26, 2015 by Eric Stirgus, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
http://www.ajc.com/news/news/local-education/gwinnett-students-win-app-competition/njxB8/
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Earlier article:
"Mrs. Pintu Thaker, 'Rock Star' high school teacher"
September 2014, Khabar magazine
http://www.khabar.com/magazine/community-newsmakers/mrs-pintu-thaker-rock-star-high-school-teacher
[The article above appears only on the website for March 2015, not in the March print/digital issues.]
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