Contest Challenges Students to Use Technology to Enhance Communication

MCPS has launched the fourth year of its student contest, United We Learn. This year’s contest, United We Learn: Innovative Communication Challenge, encourages students to think about how communication affects their daily lives, and how technology can be used to enhance communication.

Middle and high school students are challenged to conceptualize an Amazon Alexa Skill (or series of skills) that shares information of importance about the school district, addresses communication barriers, strengthens the home-school connection and positively impacts the MCPS community. Alexa Skills use voice to access and share information.

Elementary school students are challenged to design a webpage that shares information of importance about their school, addresses communication barriers, strengthens the home-school connection and positively impacts the MCPS community.

The contest will take place in two phases, with the winning proposals moving on to the second phase. Second-phase participants will have the opportunity for hands-on learning as the Alexa skills and webpages are developed. MCPS will publish the winning Alexa Skill(s). Winning webpage(s) will be published to the students’ schools’ websites.

Submissions are due by 5 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 20.

To learn more about the contest, visit this webpage.

Watch this video for more info.