Dive Brief:

• Actualize.Me, an incentive-based virtual guidance counselor app, won the third annual Philly EdTech Hackathon — a joint venture between Code For Philly, Slate, and Jarvus — over the weekend.
• The app encourages students to explore a variety of extracurricular activities that, in turn, demonstrate various career fields to them, additionally helping them build out their resumes with accomplishments from those resumes.
• The runners up included a district budget data mapping tool called the Online Budget Visualization App in second place, and a reading progress and assessment app called Reading Pal in third.

Dive Insight:

Hackathon attendees were encouraged to create an original application that would serve the Philadelphia School District or a wider segment of the educational community. Ideas were proposed by high school students, school district employees, and other hackers, with inspiration coming from open budget data sets released last month to the public by the Philly School District. The solutions created in the event will make progress available to the public as it comes, and the district — the real beneficiary here — could decide to follow up on one or more the projects.