Nikola DeBaun / Journalism I Writer

      Computer Science CTE program students held their CoolTech showcase in the library where other students and staff gathered to judge apps they created. 

    Program students gathered into teams and designed apps to help make everyone’s daily lives a little bit easier. There were seven groups that were in the showcase, which was held during third and fourth periods on Friday, April 11.

     Taught by Teresa Whitmer, the program offers many different elements one might find with technology usage.  

     During the showcase there were seven groups, each with their own app design. As spectators walked up to them, they would then give a sales pitch to earn votes for their app. When the guests finished hearing all the groups’ sales pitch, they were directed to a table where they voted on three categories: best solution, best sales pitch and best app. 

      One group’s app was called CoConsumer, and the people behind the design of the app were two juniors, Joshua Forester and Jon Dulabahn. The idea behind the app was to make an app where people could keep track of their warranties on things like cars, refrigerators, washers and dryers, et cetera. The app even lets consumers see when the warranties are going to expire so they can renew them if applicable. 

     “Our app CoConsumer was originally meant to be an app to keep track of inflation and cost per unit to help people buy the cheapest groceries since a lot of people struggle to afford groceries,” Forester said.

     The second group’s app was called Potters, which is an app for investing in stocks. It teaches people how to invest in stocks, and there’s a stats feature where consumers can see how high they rank on the app compared to other users. 

     The app also lets people keep track of all the stocks they currently own and shows how much the stocks are so they can choose to buy or sell stocks. The people behind this app are juniors Pratik Kafley and Landon Stephens. They won third place in best solution and first place for best sales pitch. 

      “We came up with the idea because there are a lot of people who want to invest but don’t know how or where to start. So we decided to make an app that solves that problem,” Stephens said. 

     Another group named their app Safeguard Authenticate, which is an app that cycles through many passwords that consumers set up on the app so that no one can hack any accounts they have. The passwords cycle through a 10-minute cycle, and if people get a new phone, there’s a QR code they can use to recover their account on the app. 

     Junior Aubrey Daniels and sophomore Trevor Bogovich are the two who created this app. Their inspiration for the app came from an unfortunate personal experience.

     “I got hacked which caused me to think of ways I could protect my security more than traditional cyber security ways,” Daniels said.

     Fomode is the next group, and their app allows users to find clothes they want without having to go into a store and be disappointed in seeing that the store does not have what they want, or they do, but maybe not in their size. 

     Juniors Emma Brereton, Dante Forbes, and Dylan Manion created the app. Their inspiration stemmed from not knowing what to wear for certain types of events.

     “Originally [the app was created] to help suggest what to wear to events, dress nice, etc. It evolved into helping people find clothing they want to buy without having to go store to store on a fruitless search,” Forbes said.

     Procrastination Annihilation is the next group, and their app helps people learn to not procrastinate by having them create a list of chores they need to do or anything they need to work on, and when they are finished with that chore or activity, the user can check it off their to-do list. 

     The app also allows the user to turn off all notifications on social media for a certain amount of time so they can focus on their tasks for the day. 

    Juniors Remington O’Brien, Joshua Jordan and Nick Richards are the brains behind the app, and their motivation for the creation of this app is simple: all three of them are procrastinators. 

Continuation from April 30, 2025 print edition

     “We all struggle with Procrastination so we wanted to make an app to help with it,” Jordan said.

     They placed in all three categories as well: first place for best solution, second place for best sales pitch and second place for best app. 

     “We think that by placing in second for the other two categories we demonstrated not just specialty but overall excellence,” O’Brien said.

     The second-to-last group is MindPathways, and this app is simple, yet complex with how it can help people’s lives. It helps the user with anxiety and being in the moment and uses a therapy technique called DBT, which helps users of the app learn how to use DBT skills in everyday life. 

     This group also placed in all three categories: second place in best solution, third place in best sales pitch and first place in best app. 

     Juniors, Larson Croston and Anya Culver and a sophmore, Olivia Kolczynski were in charge of creating and designing this app.  

      “I was in a residential facility for half a year, and was taught DBT,” Croston said

     The final group that was part of the showcase was Family Forge, and this group created the app to help families stay more organized with events their kids have and so parents can go to the events. 

     They originally wanted to come up with a simple planner app, but then realized that all planner apps are very simple, so they created some added features to give families an easier place to see all the events scheduled for the family. 

     Overall, they placed third in best app. Junior Josh Gates and sophomore Braidon Reynolds were the masterminds behind this app.. They wanted to place first in at least one category, but they are happy they got third place.

     “We think we didn’t get a higher ranking because we didn’t do the best at presenting as compared to others,” Reynolds said.

     There was a lot of people that went to the showcase to see all the groups’ presentations. Everyone in the groups worked hard on their app design, solutions to real-life problems, and their sales pitch on their apps. Overall, it seemed like a great year for the CoolTech showcase. 

     “It was pretty cool and rewarding over the amount of work put in,” Kolczynski said.