TAG Education Collaborative Announces 2012 WEBChallenge Scholarship Competition for Students

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ATLANTA (December 21, 2011) –TAG Education Collaborative (TAG-Ed), the charitable organization established by the Technology Association of Georgia (TAG) that is dedicated to preparing the next-generation workforce through better education and real-life job experiences, announced the opening of registration for the 10th annual WEBChallenge Scholarship Competition beginning December 12, 2011. Student teams have until February 10, 2012 to register and build an application of their choosing (simple game, tutorial, etc.) that will teach other students a topic of the team’s choice related to science, technology, engineering or math (STEM) in a new and engaging way.

This year’s challenge includes two new components to engage students:

• Mobile website—In addition to developing a traditional website, the mobile website component encourages students to earn “extra credit” by developing their solution optimized for the smaller handheld display and touch-screen interface available on a mobile device.
• Marketing Challenge—students must design and implement a plan to bring their application to market. Students will have from February 10 – February 29 to market their solution to their target market.  A special award will be given to the team with the best adoption rate.

 “We expect this year’s program to be the most competitive yet.  We nearly doubled the number of teams and participants last year and the addition of our two new components truly allows students to showcase their web development talent, as well as to experience the broad spectrum of skills needed to run a technology business today,” says Michael Robertson, executive director of TAG Education Collaborative.

Judging and Scholarship Awards –Judging will be conducted by members of the business community and scholarship prizes will be given at a special awards program in March in the following categories: 

• Best/Most Useful Concept
• Best/ Most Effective Implementation
• Best Documentation Package
• Judges Prize for Best Overall Creativity
• Grand Prize for Best Overall Entry
• Successful Marketing Award

Tino Mantella, president of Technology Association of Georgia (TAG) stated, “The WEBChallenge Scholarship Competition, now in its 10th year, has awarded over $150,000 in scholarships since its inception.  This is one step TAG has taken to improve the workforce readiness of technology students in Georgia.  Students are given a true opportunity to learn firsthand many of the skills needed in technology businesses today.”

Supply Budget Stipends for Teachers – Faculty members from last year’s winning teams were overwhelmingly positive about the teachers’ stipend.  TAG-Ed plans to continue the stipends awarded in 2012.

“This continues to be a challenging time and we want to recognize the hard work that the faculty advisors do to help teams be successful.  It’s an opportunity for us to help teachers access the tools they need to best educate their students.” said Dan McDade, chairman of the TAG Education Collaborative Board and president of Point Clear LLC.

Eligibility – To be eligible teams must meet the following criteria:

• Teams consist of two to four high school students (home school teams and after-school programs are also encouraged to participate). 
• Each team must have a faculty advisor. The faculty advisor may be anyone who represents the school organization and he or she may represent multiple teams from the same school.
• Students from different schools may participate on a single team, as long as they have one faculty advisor.

The TAG Education Collaborative is dedicated to strengthening Georgia's future workforce by uniting Technology Association of Georgia (TAG) resources with leading education initiatives while emphasizing science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).

For more information on the WEBChallenge Scholarship Competition, visit www.tagedonline.org or contact Michael Robertson, Executive Director of TAG Education Collaborative at mrobertson@tagonline.org .

About TAG Education Collaborative

TAG Education Collaborative (TAG-Ed) initiatives include a student internship program for STEM students that placed 60 students in 2011, the WEBChallenge competition for high school students, and the Vine Event, a fundraiser which has raised more than $160,000 to support STEM education.  TAG Education Link is the newest program from TAG-Ed that brings TAG’s 14,000+ members together with middle school and high school STEM programs to provide students with relevance and allows them to gain an appreciation for the opportunities available in STEM careers. For additional information, visit TAG Education Collaborative or contact Michael Robertson at (404) 920 – 2038 or mrobertson@tagonline.org

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