Teacher
Ashly Tritch is a seventh-grade math teacher at Olson Middle School. She is a member of the OMS tech team and serves as the building Curriculum Technology Advocate (CT).Instructional Strategy
Two years ago, in collaboration with Charlie Beck (media director), Ashly facilitated Coding Club at OMS to give her students opportunities to make relevant connections beyond the classroom. This year, in an effort to engage more girls in coding and computer science, Ashly partnered with Best Buy to identify, facilitate, and support seven Technovation teams at Olson Middle School.Technovation is a group of entrepreneurs, mentors, and educators that invite teams of girls from all over the world to learn and apply the skills needed to solve real-world problems through technology. Ashly reached out to OMS teachers for student suggestions and was blown away when over fifty girls showed up to the informational meeting. Twenty-five girls committed to the opportunity and Ashly is currently facilitating seven Technovation teams.
The Technovation teams meet once or twice a week after school in the media center. With the help of Ashly and volunteer mentors from Best Buy, the teams have worked through four stages of design thinking including ideation (identify a problem in the community), technology (develop a mobile app solution), entrepreneurship (build a business plan to launch the app), and pitch (bring the business to market).
A team of 8th-grade students chose to focus on the Opioid crisis after identifying that it is a real problem on both a local and global level. They built an app called AntiOPI that helps people decide whether to take their painkillers or not, logs painkiller intake so users know when to take their next dosage, makes it easier for users to contact their painkiller supplier, and educates people on the dangers of overusing painkillers. The girls have enjoyed having the freedom to create and problem solve without boundaries and are looking forward to future opportunities in computer science.
Ashly will be taking her seven teams to the Minneapolis Convention Center on May 11 to pitch their apps and compete in Appapalooza, the finale of the Technovation challenge in Minnesota. Her experience watching these teams of girls learn and grow this year has been rewarding. In the future, she hopes to continue offering opportunities for her students to engage in meaningful and relevant problem solving inside and outside of the classroom.
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