This year, we broke our record again with over 450 students presenting 145 innovative and impactful projects at the 2021 Emoti-Con NYC Youth Digital Media and Tech Challenge.

Judges from Adobe, NASA, Facebook, Disney, Nickelodeon, Spotify, Google, IBM, Pear Deck, Playspaces, Deloitte, 2U, Fullstack Academy, CUNY, Parsons, and many other technology and media organizations evaluated each submission to select 5 winners and 10 honorable mentions.

Watch the Award Ceremony

Emoti-Con Award Winners

Winning teams will receive award certificates and Sparkle Labs "Discover Electronics" Kits by mail.

Note: For DIIT Design League schools, your students were eligible for additional awards from the DOE. Go here to see the winners!

Best Pitch: “Remote Rewards Chrome Extension" by students from Mouse & DIIT Design League @ IS 27

Remote Rewards Chrome Extension incentivizes students to participate in remote learning by assigning points to school activities, creating a fun and interactive digital learning environment. Points can be transferred to homework passes and local store gift cards. This app was created by students from the Mouse & DIIT Design League program.

Most Innovative: "Fantasy Neighborhood" by students from Beam Center

Fantasy Neighborhood is an interactive website that explores creating digital spaces. Created by 44 students in Beam Center programs around the city, Fantasy Neighborhood integrates mix media including drawing, sculpture and claymation to collectively represent their imagined neighborhood.

Most Social Impact: "The Momentum of the Butterfly" by students from Educational Video Center

The Momentum of the Butterfly is a documentary conceived, written, filmed, and edited by students from EVC, drawing on their own experiences as members of different national and cultural communities! It closely examines gender discrimination, violence, and inequality in order to fight back against the structures that perpetuate it.

Point of View: "Anti-Eviction Mapping Project" by students from CS4All @ Bronx Academy for Software Engineering

The Anti-Eviction Mapping Project is an interactive map/website that takes New York City's open data on evictions and creates a map showing the number of evictions taking place in neighborhoods in the Bronx and NYC as a whole. The website looks at trends and showcases research highlighting issues around equity in housing.

Most Entertaining: “A Teen’s Diary about Mental and Emotional Health" by a student from Mouse & DIIT Design League @ Bronx International HS

"A Teen's Diary" is an expansive 81-page digital diary with beautiful, black-and-white artwork and illustration addressing issues around mental and emotional health. Created by Litza, an artist and writer at Bronx International High School's Mouse and DIIT Design League program, this project encourage teenagers to share their experiences dealing with depression and isolation.

Honorable Mentions

• "A!ert Me" from Mouse & DIIT Design League @ MS 301
• "Admirers of Life" from Stephen A Halsey JHS 157 Q
• "Animal Adoption Game" from Thomas A. Edison CTE High School
• "Dr. Foodie" from Nano Hackers Academy
• "Food Help Organization App" from Mouse & Brooklyn Library Design League
• "MS 358Q Student App" from Mouse & DIIT Design League @ MS 358Q
• "No Pain No Board Game" from Mouse & DIIT Design League @ MS 582
• "Our Environment" from Thomas A. Edison CTE High School
• "South BK Mutual Aid App" from Mouse Design League
  
• "What is a healthy relationship?" from Global Kids

Thank You and Congratulations!

Thank you to the 453 students who produced and presented creative, playful, powerful, and insightful work for Emoti-Con, during a full year stuck at home. Thank you to our 50+ judges for leaving over 500 thoughtful, supportive, and constructive reviews for student teams.

Thank you to this year's partners and collaborators- Best Buy, DIIT, the Games for Change Student Challenge, Hive NYC, Minds on Design Lab, and CS4ALL NYC.

Emoti-Con Steering Committee

Emoti-Con is a collaboration managed by Mouse and a steering committee of youth designers, alumni leaders and youth-serving organizations: Code Nation, Global Kids, New York Public Library and Parsons School of Design.

We look forward to seeing you all in the spring of 2022!