The St. Ignatius Reaching MAGIS program is designed to help students get on the track for college in Catholic schools.

“We try to identify young boys in sixth through eighth grade who are promising, rising students, and get them involved early,” explains school principal Dan Bradesca.  “These are students from schools throughout the Cleveland area who spend 15 Saturdays in English, test prep and study skills, and computer and graphic arts.”

A specific part of the program includes an entrepreneurship demo. For the second year this summer, Nick Pavlak of BABL Media has led eight MAGIS teams in entrepreneurship and technology education. The teams worked with Pavlak in developing companies and ultimately presenting their ideas to a panel of experts at LaunchHouse.

“The future of technology lives in mobile technology, and this generation is growing up in the digital world,” says Bradesca. “This program gives kids the basic knowledge of mobile application design and development from an entrepreneurial approach.”

The students went from concept to sketching the idea out, to marketing and construction of the business. “They were really doing some intense stuff,” says Bradesca. The culmination was a presentation on July 9 to LaunchHouse entrepreneurs.

The top three companies were The Shoe Finder app, which helps users find shoes at a low price; the Emergency App, which lets people know you’re in trouble; and the Achieving app, which helps people attain their personal goals.

BABL will work with the students later this year on actually developing the top app ideas.

Source: Dan Bradesca
Writer: Karin Connelly