Ten teams of creative middle and high school students across the country are the winners of a national competition to develop mobile applications that address a need or problem in the students' communities or schools.  The winning apps range from encouraging a community to do more recycling, to making it easier for students with disabilities to take notes in class, to identifying invasive plant species in lakes.

The competition, the Verizon Innovative App Challenge (http://appchallenge.tsaweb.org/), was created by the Verizon Foundation (http://www.verizonfoundation.org/) in partnership with the Technology Student Association (http://www.tsaweb.org/) to help boost student engagement and interest in science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM.  The students were asked to use their STEM skills to design app concepts that provided real-world solutions for issues in their communities or schools.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab (http://www.media.mit.edu/) will continue to work with students of the winning teams to refine their projects.  Verizon will provide the teams with professional support and training to help them bring their concepts to market.  In addition, each wining team's school will receive a $10,000 Verizon Foundation grant to advance STEM education, and each team member will receive the new Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 courtesy of Samsung Mobile (http://www.samsung.com/us/mobile/cell-phones).