NTLB, Fresh, GST win Design Challenge

By: Nelly Singh

Posted: 6/27/08

Students competed in the fourth annual iSchool Senior Design Challenge June 11 featuring projects that offered solutions to real-world problems or proposed innovative and beneficial services, according to the iSchool web site.
The first place award of $2,500 and the Product Presentation award was given to team NTLB, who created a "No Teacher Left Behind" application. Teams Fresh and GST were in second and third place, respectively.
"This is the best group [of groups] I've ever seen. It was certainly one of the biggest. … We're getting really good projects [and] really useful things. Companies are getting interested too," faculty judge Thomas Smith, director of undergraduate programs and assistant professor at the iSchool, said.
Winning team NTLB's application provided an online community to help teachers improve their skills, according to an e-mail from the team.
"[The application] provides an online grade book to collect data on students and analyze their performance, a way for teachers to communicate with other teachers to share documents and class room resources [and] online collaboration made possible through wikis, discussion boards and online surveys," the team wrote in the e-mail.
A percentage of team NTLB's monetary award will be donated to the Philadelphia school system, according to the team.
Team Fresh created a much different application, called "iBrewery," which allows potential customers to design their own beer recipe using the "Brew Generator," have it brewed and delivered, according to Stephen Klim, an Fresh team member and information systems major.
"[There's a] 'brew master' who will assist by analyzing a recipe and provide suggestions to create the perfect brew," Klim wrote in an e-mail.
In third place, Team GST's application focused on business processes.
GST's created "EZ-Commerce," an online store front that allows low to mid-end users to operate back-end processes without requiring extensive knowledge, according to Nick Emanueli, a GST team member and software engineering major.
Of the 11 teams that presented their applications in the pre-event showcase, only five were chosen for the final challenge based on the content of their documents and teams that "showed promise," according to Smith.
The five finalist teams included NTLB, Fresh, GST, Left Field and OAT.
For the challenge, teams were judged on their "poster, presentation to the audience, and the actual working implementation of the system," Glenn Booker, an auxiliary assistant professor at the iSchool, wrote in an e-mail.
Many of the teams agreed that this competition allows them to apply the knowledge they have gathered in school and on co-op and apply it to create a product that benefits society.
According to Klim, team Fresh is "very interested in going forth with this project, and looking into making a business from it."
Team NTLB consisted of Kevin Barry, Josh Caplan, Phil Cross, Joe Gravante, Chris Nies and Anthony Veiga. Team Fresh consisted of Klim, former USGA president Jeff Gardosh, Eric Gromball, Rich Loser and Ed Taylor. Team GST consisted of Emanueli, Edward Fedeli, John Fish and Neil Forshey.
Among the judges were two alumni, Lucy Boardway and Steven Melick.