2019
Prize Money for Australian National Primary & Secondary School Winners was kindly donated by Stockland.
NATIONAL WINNERS
PRIMARY SCHOOL
ANGER SWITCH, CITIPOINTE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE, BRISBANE, QUEENSLAND
The app ‘Anger Switch’ is directed at primary aged boys and girls. The aim of the app is to help young children identify when they are angry and help bring peace, in a fun way, to children. ‘Anger Switch’ uses calming colours, such as pale blue and violet and includes a description of anger, a fun maze and happy music to bring a sense of calmness. Our app has an image recogniser that is sure to bring a good laugh to you and your friends! Through ‘Anger Switch’, children will be supported along the way to making new friends.
SECONDARY SCHOOL
CODIE, SALESIAN COLLEGE, SUNBURY, VICTORIA
The app Codie has been developed with primary school-aged children in mind, as a tool for early intervention in mental health management. The app is designed to assist in developing positive coping strategies in young people and was made in liaison with the Salesian College Wellbeing Team. Codie is a gender-neutral character who will check in with young people and offer them some space to get some help with developing skills in reflection, breathing/de-escalation and a planner to help with time management.
With only 2 entries from New Zealand in 2019 we were unable to offer a NZ National Prize.
VICTORIAN STATE WINNERS
Secondary School Winners
Codie, Salesian College, Sunbury, Victoria
The app Codie has been developed with primary school-aged children in mind, as a tool for early intervention in mental health management. The app is designed to assist in developing positive coping strategies in young people and was made in liaison with the Salesian College Wellbeing Team. Codie is a gender-neutral character who will check in with young people and offer them some space to get some help with developing skills in reflection, breathing/de-escalation and a planner to help with time management.
Secondary School Regional Winners
HealthSpot, Emmanuel College, Warrnambool, Victoria
The HealthSpot app is designed for adolescents to educate and reduce stigma around mental health and illness. Included are techniques on how to stay mentally healthy, positively deal with stress as well as information around mental illness and local mental health services. Features include meditation and deep breathing. This app, designed for adolescents by an adolescent, is unique and modern.
Secondary School High Commendation
KC’s Food Aid, Killester College, Springvale, Victoria
KC’s Food Aid is an app designed to allow restaurants and other food providers to donate leftover food to homeless shelters, giving people who are in need a chance to not sleep hungry, while also minimising food wastage. The app connects food providers and volunteers, who can then deliver surplus food to homeless shelters. Providing a unique opportunity for food providers to easily reduce the amount of food that gets thrown away each day. Homeless shelters are then able to distribute the food amongst those in need, not only helping the community but also the environment. The unique value of this app is that it allows people who usually would not work together to connect and help each other out.
New South Wales State Winners
Primary School Winners
TechTutor, St Mary’s Catholic Primary School, North Sydney, NSW
TechTutor is a completely free designing tutorial multiplatform app that teaches young people the basics of design. The app gives tips and tutorials that will teach young children an exceptional amount of knowledge for designing. If the user already has a reasonable knowledge of designing then the app can also direct the user to other useful external links that are more advanced. The app will show good tutorials on the basics of design so students can do exceptional work in school and prepare them for their future. Technology is our future so start learning with TechTutor!
Primary School Regional Winners
Read Smart, Dunoon Public School, Dunoon, New South Wales
Read Smart is an app aimed at primary school students aged 4-8. Everything about the app is designed specifically for kids with dyslexia or reading difficulties, to help them with their phonics. The background is a light colour other than pink and the font is Open Dyslexia3. Each time the button is pressed, the character pops up and says the sound or word. This is designed to help students know how each sound is meant to be heard. The learning path progresses from a single sound to a word and then onto a phrase or sentence.
Primary School High Commendation
Fit’n’Fun, Mount Annan Public School, Mount Annan, New South Wales
Fit’n’Fun has been designed to increase children’s levels of activity and fitness. The app allows the user to earn stars (dollars). Every time the user finishes a workout on the app they will earn 20 stars. There are various sports drills to choose from to complete a workout. Fit’n’Fun includes a detailed video demonstrating the drill to the user. There are 3 drills for each sport. Sports included are walking, basketball, hockey and soccer. Users can use their stars to upgrade their avatar. The more activity the more stars!
Secondary School Winners
HopIn!, Warners Bay High School, Warners Bay, New South Wales
HopIn! Is a car-pooling app allowing people to register their car trip and let people who are travelling in the same direction hop in, for a contribution towards the driver’s travel expenses. Unlike taxis and Ubers, HopIn! cuts down on carbon emissions by preventing additional cars on the road. HopIn! is for people who care about the environment. HopIn! is helping to save the planet, one ride at a time.
Secondary School Regional Winners
AVO (Awesome Vibes Online), St Joseph’s Catholic College, Lochinvar, New South Wales
AVO (Awesome Vibes Online), is an app providing a medium to educate people about safety online while also acting as a platform for members of the public to report potential online threats to others’ wellbeing. This app is necessary so that parents, teachers and children are aware of the online threats that exist for their children and students, such as cyberbullying, inappropriate sexual and violent content, grooming, and unsafe viral social media trends. The app also uses data analysis to raise awareness of these threats before they cause harm. Avo is unique because it is preventative, stopping the threat before it impacts on a young individual’s health. The app is also multifaceted as it meets the issue head-on with a variety of education and engaging online tools.
Secondary School High Commendation
COu – Santa Sabina College Strathfield, Sydney, New South Wales
The app COu aims to educate and promote environmental change. It is targeted towards Australian high school students through the focus on the current climate crisis affecting their future world. The core of the app is the eco-challenge which allows users to track their carbon emissions and aim to lower them individually or in a group comprised of other app users. Users have the opportunity to empathise and understand how people in our neighbouring nation, Kiribati, are affected by our fossil fuel addiction. The overall concept of COu is that any change begins with you, but can grow exponentially when powerful motivation teams with an arsenal of knowledge.
Queensland State Winners
Primary School Winners
Anger Switch, Citipointe Christian College, Brisbane, Queensland
War Stoppers developed an app ‘Anger Switch’ directed to primary aged boys and girls. The aim of the app is to help young children identify when they are angry and help bring peace, in a fun way, to children. ‘Anger Switch’ uses calming colours, such as pale blue and violet and includes a description of anger, a fun maze and happy music to bring a sense of calmness. Our app has an image recogniser that is sure to bring a good laugh to you and your friends! Through ‘Anger Switch’, children will be supported along the way to making new friends.
Primary School Regional Winners
#familycommunic8, Golden Beach State School, Golden Beach, Queensland
#familycommunic8 helps divorced or separated families communicate with each other. It is designed to share concerning organisational information to make life less stressful and make it easier for all involved to know what is going on with pick up and drop offs, keeping both families up to date with current information, important events and appointments. #familycommunic8 has a shared calendar that children and parents can easily access.
Games are included to encourage and hopefully mend parent/child relationships. Parents can communicate too, through a note page where a parent can share with the other parent important information about children and making transitions between households run smoothly. Parents and children can talk online plus children can chat to other children who are experiencing similar situations.
Primary School High Commendation
Cyberbullying – Back In Control, Windsor State School, Brisbane, Queensland
“Cyber Bullying – Back in Control” is aimed at teenagers (mainly 13-18 year olds) who are being bullied, specifically online, but the app could help in all cases of bullying. It has 6 features including chatting to a counsellor, a calming music section to help you relax, resources and links to counselling services and instructions on how to report a bully. All of these features provide information to empower young teens and gives them strategies to forget what is making them sad and help ignore any rude comments they may have received. Our app centralises all of the necessary and relevant information from the internet, making it easy to use and navigate.
Secondary School Winners
Harvest Cook Create, St Aidan’s Anglican Girls’ School, Corinda, Queensland
‘Harvest, Cook, Create’ will help small food producers thrive by providing a marketplace that connects them with buyers in their local community. It will allow producers to sell anything from veggies or fruit to homemade gluten-free cookies. Buyers will benefit because they can purchase food that is ethical, locally sourced and unprocessed. Whilst many food producers have an online shop-front, ‘Harvest, Cook, Create’ will be a “one-stop-shop” for producers and consumers.
Secondary School High Commendation
Right Now Refugee – Cannon Hill Anglican College, Cannon Hill, Queensland
The app ‘Right Now Refugee’ has been designed to ensure that when refugees relocate to a new country, they feel welcome and informed about daily life. The app covers basic information on laws, visas, health, education, transport, housing, asylum support, common greetings, cultural events, financial support and translation support. Our prototype focuses on refugees and immigrants coming from Iraq and moving to Australia. Although, this app could be used by any immigrant specifically from non-English speaking countries to an English-speaking-country. Our app is unique as it brings together many different fields of information that immigrants need in one easy, accessible app.
Tasmanian State Winners
Primary School Winners
Confidence Coach, Sacred Heart Catholic School, Ulverstone, Tasmania
Confidence Coach is an app designed to help kids who lack self-confidence. The app features activities designed to build self-confidence. Activities such as cooking, outdoors/gardening, physical activities and meditation. The app is targeted towards kids, tweens, teens and young adults.
Western Australian State Winners
Secondary School Winners
Bin It Right, St Mary’s Anglican Girls’ School, Karrinyup, Western Australia
Bin It Right aims to solve the problem of improper waste disposal with its unique photo recognition feature. This feature allows users to simply take a photo of the item they are unsure what bin it belongs in. The app then scans the image and indicates whether the item belongs in the green waste, waste or recycling bin. Bin It Right is designed for anybody having trouble determining where to put their rubbish and anyone looking for a quick and convenient solution.
Tech Girls Movement Award
Game Changer Award
This award is chosen by the TGMF as the app that is believed will make the most impact in the community
Breakthrough, St Clare’s College, Waverley, New South Wales
Breakthrough is an employment education app targeted specifically for teens looking for jobs. Providing education for teenagers that are preparing for a job or who are struggling to manage the workload of having a job, Breakthrough is an innovative and informative solution to the growing job demand for teens. Breakthrough is helping to make teens confident in themselves while also helping them expand their workplace capability. With information like how to create a resume, plan for an interview, manage a payslip and tons more, Breakthrough is the free answer to teenager employment education and is an app made by teens, for teens.
United Nations Sustainable Development Goals
COMMUNITY
Youth Connect – Santa Sabina College, Strathfield NSW
Youth Connect is a job searching app. This app is intended to provide young people with work experience. It allows the users to find internships, apprenticeships, part-time and voluntary work. Unlike many other job searching apps, Youth Connect will be exclusive to people of ages 15-25. This will be beneficial for younger people, as they usually have to compete with experienced workers to get part-time work. As well as offering jobs, Youth Connect will offer templates for resumes that will help educate users about creating professional resumes. We aim to allow businesses looking for younger employees to post their jobs on the app.
BAM Clubs – Dungog High School, Dungog NSW
BAM Clubs is an app created to help people in rural areas join clubs/after school activities. It allows you to join clubs that you are interested in such as; cooking, sports, gaming, reading clubs etc. and meet up with others that like the same things as you. This app is for everyone and anyone looking to find other people with similar interests. Our app provides a browse option for you to find clubs you may be interested in, group chat feature for you to chat with the people you are in a club with and many more features.
EDUCATION
Let the Water Flow – Gol Gol Public School, Gol Gol NSW
This is a free educational and informative app designed to increase students (9+ years) awareness of the environmental and social impacts that follow from the mismanagement of Darling water flows. Water diversions and negligence have resulted in the Darling River becoming unhealthy with numerous algal blooms, fish kills and the river drying out into disconnected, sometimes toxic pools. The disrupted flow of the river not only affects its large vital ecosystems but also our dryland farmers and families, indigenous populations, tourist industries, fishermen and the like. We plan to keep these water management issues at the forefront of everyone’s minds and encourage them to stand up and fight for our future along these mighty river systems.
Mentor Match – Santa Sabina College, Strathfield NSW
The MentorMatch app targets students from Yr 5 – Yr 9 and allows them to connect with others within their school that have the same interests or can help them with assignments, subject study and developing skills in areas of interest. The app will be used internally within the school and would be connected to the school website and network for security considerations. The app allows the students to form a mentor relationship and there are selections included so that they can be matched with the right person.
AMET – Macarthur Anglican School, Cobbitty NSW
AMET aims to help customers see which companies are the most environmentally aware. People want to support eco-friendly companies, but they don’t know which ones look after the environment. Amet aims to help solve this by rating companies based on how environmentally friendly they are. E.g. how much palm oil they use, and how much plastic they produce. Amet will display the companies’ ‘green ratings’ out of five stars, and give each company an information page which will talk about the given rating, and how they’re working to benefit the environment.
ENVIRONMENT
Rent and Reduce – St Mary’s Primary, North Sydney NSW
We all have an unnecessary amount of “things”, and unfortunately, these things are ending up in landfill. We are producing an overwhelming amount of pollution and our CO2 emissions need to reduce dramatically, in order to stop the devastating effects that carbon dioxide has on our planet. The idea of this app is to reduce our carbon footprint and cut down on the number of items that people need in their homes, by sharing things that we don’t use very often. This app will also bring back a sense of community and help us produce less waste. Things like ladders, lawnmowers, tables & chairs will all be included.
Green Kiwis – St Francis Xavier Tawa, Wellington, New Zealand
Green Kiwis focuses on the issue of rubbish, in New Zealand. Green Kiwis provides links to all of the councils in New Zealand so that you can find out whether or not the item you intend to dispose of can be recycled. The app will also provide you with eco-friendly alternatives that hopefully make people think about changing some of their habits.
Tree Hugger – Santa Sabina College, Strathfield NSW
TreeHugger is an app dedicated to the restoration of the Australian bush. So much of Australia’s bushland has been destroyed, taking our native plants, trees and animals along with it. With TreeHugger you can sponsor a tree’s growth or regrowth in the bush, providing the tree with fertiliser, water, and other supplies they need to regrow. You can also sponsor a tree to be planted in areas where there aren’t enough plants. Even if you don’t want to donate, you can raise awareness about the cause and learn about Australia’s bushland and the unique and exciting creatures inhabiting it.
Ethical Shop Hopper – Cannon Hill Anglican College, Cannon Hill QLD
Our app provides awareness about where our food comes from and the impact it has on people and the environment. It is a scanner designed for phones and aimed at busy people who do not want to research products before going shopping. Another target audience is children who encourage their parents to be more ethical due to a point collect and scoring system which ranks them against their friends, and mini-games that are collected every time you scan 20 products. To use the app people scan the barcode of the product they intend to buy. The app then uses the barcode to find information on the product and gives it a rating out of five in total, on labour (age of workers, worker pay, working conditions referring to safety), environmental impact/cost, and will to improve their environmental and worker practices. The important information and rating is then displayed along with alternate products if the rating is 3 or below.
EQUALITY
Empowered Travel – Brigidine College, Indooroopilly QLD
The purpose of this app is to empower women who may feel under threat in an unfamiliar setting, enabling them to locate other like-minded women travellers in that location and travel together. Through the use of ‘Empowered Travel’, women can create life-long friendships and memories, while staying safe and feeling comfortable and supported in a foreign environment.
Lavender – Stuartholme College, Toowong QLD
Lavender aims to encourage and promote safety for women while walking. Lavender has devised a suitable solution for women who walk alone during the day or night, where they can choose to walk with other women in the area while supporting a particular charity.
HEALTH
Mind Reset – Macarthur Anglican School, Cobbitty NSW
Mind Reset is designed to encourage users on how to modify and change their behaviours when using a smartphone, in order to minimise or offset the impact of radiation. We also wish to educate smartphone users on how radiation can impact their health and future, in particular, the brain. We have 2 main functions of our app that help provoke and highlight behaviour changes. Our platform achieves this through a fun and interactive app that still assesses the user’s behaviour patterns. Our target audience is children and youth as a result of scientific experiments that show that they are more prone to radiation impacts. The unique value that our app provides is that it is focused on radiation, unlike most similar behaviours that help improve productivity or are targeted at generic habit change.
BullyOnYou! – Ormeau State School, Ormeau QLD
BullyOnYou! An app created for young people by young people. Bullying is a serious issue that can have really bad effects on your mental health. It is a problem that occurs in school, in the community, and online. The BullyOnYou! app is a gamified story-based app for students (Years 5-8) and is ideally facilitated by teachers to start conversations in class with students. Too often we are simply told what to do and not what to do at school; this app educates through starting conversations that reveal feelings, emotions and leads to understanding each other.
SleepBlasters – Loreto Kirribilli, Sydney NSW
SleepBlasters has been designed to assist children (6-14) with their sleep patterns. Things that affect your sleep may include not enough sleep, nightmares, anxiety, stress. SleepBlasters allows you to listen to music and it will give you notifications about when you should go to bed and much more. SleepBlasters will allow you to learn more about healthy sleep patterns.
PEACE
MoodDiary – Fort Street High School, Petersham NSW
MoodDiary is a wellbeing app designed to track how you are feeling daily. It will help you to appreciate yourself more and help you to see more of the positive side to things. MoodDiary includes a planner so you can organise yourself, helping to reduce stress and feel better when you get through your workload at a steady pace. This app is aimed for teenagers and young adults because issues such as self-doubt and feeling stressed can occur to those age groups.
POVERTY
FoodShare – Melbourne Girls’ College, VIC
FoodShare provides a resource for the community to help provide food to those living on the street at no extra cost to them. A member of the community notices someone who lives on the street and wants to help but doesn’t know how to. The person then opens the FoodShare app to give a general location and description of the person in need of food. Messages from the app are then collected and assessed by a local central body such as Salvos. The central body can then communicate with local registered commercial restaurants and food outlets and local domestic food suppliers and members of the local community who have registered as volunteers to supply the food to the homeless person.
Give A Feed – Citipointe Christian College, Carindale QLD
“Give A Feed” allows people in Brisbane to donate money to assist primary school children who attend school each day without food, in lower socio-economic areas of Brisbane. Research shows that children who don’t receive the proper nutrition struggle to remain focused in school. This leads to children not getting the most out of their lessons. Without proper food, kids don’t get the best out of their education and aren’t equipped to break the poverty cycle in their families. The money donated via “Give A Feed” will be used to prepare breakfast and lunch for the children who are registered with us.