FORT SMITH (KFSM)—A group of eighth and ninth graders in our area is spending their spring break designing a smartphone app.
The app will help visitors navigate the murals in downtown Fort Smith.
“These kind of projects that incorporate technology and the arts really interest me,” Mahdir Anower said.
Anower is an eighth grader at Chaffin Junior High. He's one of 11 students spending his afternoons at “Spring Break App Academy”.
“We are teamed up with Future School, and we`re making an app for the murals in Fort Smith,” Lowell Matias, student at Van Buren Freshman Academy said.
The app will help inform and guide visitors to each of the murals created by international artists during the Unexpected Project.
“I’m on the content team, which really designs what goes into the app and a subgroup of the content team is the photography team, which I`m also in,” Anower said.
While the content team does research and gathers the elements for the app, the structure team works on the actual development of the technology.
“I`ve actually learned quite a bit, what actually goes into making an app, what are all the elements you need to make it and how many people it takes to put it together,” Anower said.
“This is a really good opportunity for kids and youth to really put themselves out there,” Matias said.
In collaboration with 64.6 Downtown, students developing the app are helping Future School demonstrate their project-based real-world learning model, which is now enrolling for the 10th grade.
A prototype of the app will be unveiled at 4 p.m. on Friday (March 25) at 1100 Garrison Avenue.