From Bilal Shebaro:

Gage Martin, Sophie Gairo, and Maria Bisaga with their 1st Place Prize from the AppleTV Hackathon

After nearly completing the Mobile Apps course (COSC 3325) here at St. Edward’s University during the Fall 2015 semester, three computer Science students (Sophie Gairo, Gage Martin, and Maria Bisaga) felt excited to explore different opportunities that would allow them to take the knowledge they learned in class and expand it to new areas of mobile programming. As such, the three students attended the Apple TV Hackathon held at Capital Factory on November 22nd, 2015. This all-day programming event consisted of 11 hours where teams competed to build the best application for the brand new Apple TV. The applications that were built were judged based on their innovative design and how well they were executed.

Sophie, Gage, and Maria decided to create an Apple TV application that would act as a second screen in business establishments, offices, or social settings. To do this, they laid down a framework that would act as a client for WordPress. This framework allowed them to use the WordPress API in order to connect template pages from live WordPress sites. The app interface was very customizable and user friendly.

The students’ intention to participate in the Apple TV Hackathon was purely to increase their skillset and apply knowledge that they gained from their Mobile Apps course they took at St. Edward’s, but in the end they also won the first place for Creativity and Innovation. “As the instructor of this course, I am really proud of the students who took the initiative to go beyond the classroom and applied their knowledge in the most recent trends of mobile computing”, stated Dr. Shebaro. As the winners, the students walked away with a brand-new Apple TV as their prize.