Imagine being a 17-year-old high school junior and waking up to see yourself on the front page of your town’s newspaper. That’s what Joshua Markle of Williamsburg did this morning. His smiling face was front and center in today’s newspaper. Let me tell you about what earned him this recognition.
First, a little about Joshua. A junior at Warhill High School, he also attends the New Horizons Governor’s School for Science and Technology in nearby Hampton. New Horizons is a magnet school that offers advanced science and math education to students in the region. He began learning how to code when he was in sixth grade, using basic web development tools such as HTML. At the time, his goal was making a basic website, but that led him into programming. Since then, he’s learned to make video games, and he engages in smaller video gram programming competitions known as game jams. In his spare time (!!) he also plays soccer for Warhill and for a traveling soccer team.
In response to a program called the Congressional App Challenge, Joshua developed an app called Milestone, which is designed to trace the driving hours for student drivers. He was inspired to develop this app when he got his learner’s permit two years ago. One of the requirements for getting a permanent license is to complete a certain number of driving hours; this app helps new drivers record their driving hours, along with ancillary information about whether the hours were in the day or night and what the weather conditions were like.
The first Congressional App Challenge was in 2016; the challenge was created to encourage students to showcase their coding talents. This year, the challenge generated almost 3,000 apps submitted to 335 members of Congress, setting a record for the most students registered and the most apps submitted. Joshua’s congressman, Rob Wittman, congratulated Joshua for his win, commenting that “this is an incredibly useful and well-designed app.” He went on to say that “the ability to code, along with STEM skills, is becoming increasingly important as we move further into a digital world.”
Joshua was inspired to enter the app challenge by his teacher Islam Bedir at New Horizons. BEdir encouraged all the students in his computational physics class (they teach this in high school?), and Joshua rose to the challenge. As the winner of Virginia’s 1st Congressional District competition, Joshua will attend a celebration in April called #House of Code, where he and other winners will get to demonstrate their apps to members of Congress, staffers, and members of the tech community.
Way to go, Josh!
So impressive! Good for Joshua! And good for all the other participants, too.