A mobile phone app helping 9th grade students with the Physics-Chemistry subject was the winner of the second edition of Apps for Good.

An application for mobile phones helping 9th grade students study Physics-Chemistry was the winner of the second edition of Apps for Good, an initiative originally launched in the United Kingdom to challenge primary and secondary school students to design applications for mobile phones or other such technological devices with social purposes. The winning app (application), FQ9, provides explanatory tutorials for content on the 9th grade Physics-Chemistry program along with the resolution of any formula parameter and serving to stimulate the interest and motivation of students to learn this subject in an appealing and dynamic fashion.

Winning second place was the Agro Conta app that enables small farmers to better account for their production, registering their costs and earnings and simultaneously verifying their economic viability. Coming in third place was the app Help People, designed for persons living in isolated locations, bringing together not only emergency details but also useful contacts for simple daily needs. The “Public Choice” award went to Cook Wizard, which got over 500 votes. This is an app that integrates a virtual larder and a bar-code reader, among other technologies, to generate recipe suggestions tailored to the respective user profile.

There were also distinctions for two students who designed the proposal for The Dropper, which provides means to avoid water wastage and a student from the team that designed the app Help People, winner of the “Young Digital Entrepreneurs” award.

Within the Apps for Good framework, which extended over the course of an academic year, teachers take on the role of coordinators and inspirers, and with students accessing digital content alongside contacts with specialists from around the world and thus contributing towards an alteration in the currently prevailing educational models. In the 2015/2016 Apps for Good award, an initiative involving various different partners, including the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and leading technology firms, some 1,200 students and 140 teachers from 67 Portuguese schools participated and produced around one hundred applications.