Crossroads Student Wins Congressional App Award

For the last seven years, Congressman Ted Lieu has welcomed high school students who live or attend school in California’s 36th District to participate in an annual Congressional App Challenge encouraging students to learn how to code. On Dec. 3, he hosted a ceremony for this year’s winners at Loyola Marymount University. Included was Crossroads senior Sophie Ma, who won second place for her app Quizme, a study-material generator that helps students prepare for exams with AI generated quizzes and flashcards. 

Sophie originally thought of the idea during her junior year in an Upper School Crossroads Advanced Studies (CAS) Computer Science class, which focused on AI technologies. The yearlong course culminated with an assignment that challenged students to create an app of their own. Thus, the idea for Quizme was born. Sophie aimed to create a unique platform unlike other quiz apps, one that included AI-generated digital flashcards that saved users time, allowing students to prioritize mastering content.

“It’s a tool that I've always dreamed of having,” said Sophie. “For tests, I always study with my friends and we quiz each other. It's just a really good way to remember stuff. Having it digitally, where the app automatically generates content, means you don't have to spend the time coming up with questions and trying to ask them in a random order. I was just trying to streamline that process.”

Sophie has worked diligently to deploy the app and make it publicly accessible. Each step of the process has provided valuable opportunities to learn. In addition to submitting her code as part of the submission process for the Congressional App Challenge, Sophie had to answer three essay prompts: What would you do in a 2.0 version of the app? What inspired you to make this? And what are some technical difficulties you faced? One of the biggest obstacles Sophie overcame was figuring out how to pass data between different files. Through many stages of research and experimentation, Sophie learned how to incorporate localStorage, a property that allows website developers to transfer data from each window to the next, so that quiz responses generated from the application’s programming interface (API) are also displayed in the user’s library window and in flashcards. The result is a platform that’s intuitive to use with easily accessible learning materials in multiple formats. 

Sophie says she is grateful to the friends who helped her test the app and gave feedback during the design process. She also credits Technology & Innovation Department Chair and CAS Computer Science Teacher Paul Way for his thoughtful mentorship. In addition to getting named as one of the challenge’s winners, a highlight of the experience was meeting fellow high school coders from around Los Angeles.

“It was really cool to be able to build an app because I've never really done that before,” said Sophie. “Being in an actual Comp Sci class for a year and having a teacher who worked through problems with me helped so much. Getting to meet other people also making these things who are my age, and who are passionate about the same things, was a really amazing opportunity.”