OREANDA-NEWS. Lenovo and the National Academy Foundation (NAF) today announced 10 NAF Academies have been selected to participate in the Lenovo Scholar Network, a program designed to enable the next generation of developers and entrepreneurs through a rich application development curriculum and creation of apps. As part of the program, students will participate in a project-based competition that tasks them with designing and developing a mobile app and a business plan for taking the app to market.  

Since officially launching the Lenovo Scholar Network in July, NAF has received a record number of applications from NAF academies across the United States eager to participate in the program.

Through the network, students will be exposed to a well-rounded curriculum of mobile app development and entrepreneurship courses that will provide them with the knowledge, resources and practical experience to ensure college and career success.

The Lenovo Scholar Network is designed to encourage greater interest among underserved high school students in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects while providing them with high-tech skills to succeed in the 21st century. During an initial pilot in 2012, students from five NAF Information Technology Academies across the United States participated in the program and successfully created and launched apps, some of which are available to the public on Google Play. With the continued support of this program, Lenovo and NAF are able to bring this experience to even more students across the country.

Academies will use Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) App Inventor, a web-based tool for creating Android apps, to build and test their apps on Lenovo devices. MIT App Inventor is a joint project of the MIT Media Lab's Center for Mobile Learning and MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.  NAF and MIT are working together to provide technical assistance and to develop support materials for teachers using MIT App Inventor.

Lenovo will provide each of the 10 participating schools with ThinkPad laptops and YOGA tablets to aid the students in development, coding and testing of their mobile app as well as to help teachers and mentors with the implementation of the curriculum.