Congressman Chris Pappas Announces Winner of 2019 Congressional App Challenge

Washington, D.C.– Today, Congressman Chris Pappas announced that Daniel Ethridge, a senior at Bedford High School, has won the 2019 Congressional App Challenge for New Hampshire's First Congressional District.

The Congressional App Challenge is a competition aimed at encouraging middle and high school students to learn how to code by creating their own applications. The challenge is intended to highlight the value of computer science and STEM education. The challenge provides an opportunity for students to explore coding, design and create an app, and showcase their abilities.

Daniel's app, Now-Do, is a task management app that sorts the user's tasks, lists, and reminders by time and location. This helps the user see what tasks they set up for a certain time or a certain location, like a grocery list that pops up when you get to the grocery store.

"Congratulations to Daniel on this exceptional accomplishment," said Congressman Pappas. "It takes creativity, hard work, and skill to create any app, and I am glad to see Daniel's project succeed. This challenge is a great way to highlight the talent of New Hampshire students, and I look forward to seeing more entries next year."

"I was inspired to make this app after being burned by countless to-do apps that simply did not work for me," said Daniel. "So, I took upon this challenge to do something I haven't done before – to design, prototype, and finalize a real-world, fully functional app from scratch in less than a week."

Winners of the 2019 Congressional App Challenge are invited to #HouseOfCode. #HouseOfCode is an event, held each spring, where the winners from each district's Congressional App Challenge travel to Washington, D.C. to meet their representatives and discuss their apps.
The Congressional App Challenge is an annual competition hosted by the U.S. House of Representatives to recognize outstanding students within the computer sciences. The challenge was created to shine light on the growing importance of tech skills and to encourage students to pursue careers in the computer sciences. The challenge is open to all U.S. high school students in participating districts and received more than 1,700 student-created apps in 2018.