Carrollton High trio creates app to help ESOL students | Times Georgian

“Merssy is a former EL student who progressed out of the program a few years ago,” said Blakemore. “She has a great understanding of what it is like and also how to be successful in the program.”

Merssy said she wanted to make an app to help her peers who are learning a second language.

“I know how hard it is to feel behind or left out by your own class, which is a place where you need to feel safe and be able to learn new things everyday,” said Merssy. “I wanted to make something that could help students both academically and in their journey to learn a second language, which for many is not as easy as it is for others.”

Upon opening the app, users will see a scroll wheel of different categories, such as adjectives, family words, and school words. Once the desired category is chosen, a random word and its definition in English and Spanish from that category are generated.

Blakemore said the students hope to progress by adding more words, definitions, and pictures to help English learning students connect with what they are learning and to what they are seeing on a daily basis.

“We entered this app into the Computer Science for Georgia App contest and will find out how we did soon,” said Blakemore. “But the students have continued working on it to make it a great resource for our growing ELL student population.”

The Computer Science for Georgia App and Design Challenge is a statewide computer programming competition for Georgia students. The goal is to allow middle and high school students to gain recognition…