MOUNT EDEN — Television viewers across the country may see a group of South Bronx students on their screens this month.
The six 13-year-olds attend the Bronx Academy of Promise and are starring in a new national ad campaign for Verizon Wireless after coming up with what the company judged to be one of the best app ideas in the country.
"People told me that they saw it," said Samuel Owuse, one of the eighth-graders featured in the commercial. "I walked into school, and they were like, 'Oh, nice ad, or commercial. I saw you on TV,' and I felt famous."
Owuse and his peers were among 10 national winners of Verizon's 2013 Innovative App Challenge for developing QuestMath, an app that uses Greek mythology to help students improve their math skills.
The game has eight levels of increasing difficulty named after Greek gods such as Zeus, Aphrodite and Poseidon, and players learn about Greek myths while solving math problems that cover basic skills like multiplication and addition.
Students at the Bronx Academy of Promise had described math as the subject that they struggled with the most, according to Principal Catherine Jackvony.
"Our problem was basically to help students, kids and even adults on their basic math operations," said Rokiatou Sissoko, one of the designers. "So we decided in our app that we would put multiplication, division, addition [and] subtraction."
The ad campaign features Owuse, Sissoko and their classmates and teammates Sherly Quezada, King Lewis, Jhony Flores and Michael Bonnah. It is called #PotentialOfUs and consists of three videos, one of which had its television debut on Feb. 1 on NBC.
The commercials tell the story of how the six Bronx students built their app, won the national competition and went to present it at a conference in Florida.
Bonnah said that seeing the ad campaign was a lot of fun, both for him and for his relatives.
"My whole family saw what happened, and I kept on pointing to the TV," he said. "They were jumping up and down, too."
The ad "Opening Doors" discusses the students' goals for the future, which include making a computer game, creating an Iron Man suit and building the first metal human heart.
The competition had a strong impact on Sissoko's career goals, as she shifted from hoping to go into medicine to hoping to go into computer science.
"I want to be a software engineer," she said. "I was so fascinated with the idea of technology, how we can create something that can help the future or help our society."
It had a strong impact on her confidence as well, as she went from being a self-described shy student to the current Student Council president.
The ads are part of the Verizon Wireless Black History Month campaign and will run nationwide on television, online and in print throughout February.
The Innovative App Challenge is meant to increase student interest in science, technology, engineering and math by putting students in teams and having them come up with a concept for an app that addresses a need in their school or community.
Verizon decided to feature the Bronx students in their Black History Month ads because they embodied how finding one's passion can help lead to success, according to company spokeswoman Ellen Yu.
"Since they won the contest, they have grown so much," she said. "And they’re also inspiring their classmates to find their passion and reach their potential."
QuestMath is available for free in the Google Play store, and the students now plan to create a company that will help people make their own apps.
"We'd like to make a business that helps kids make apps and also helps them with their teamwork skills so they can feel how we felt when we won," said Bonnah.
