Rhythm Reader wins Rep. Brad Sherman’s 2022 Congressional App Challenge in California’s 30th District

Rep. Brad Sherman has named Michael Ward, a 12th Grader at Granada Hills Charter High School, as the winner of the 2022 Congressional App Challenge in California’s 30th District.




When asked what inspired the creation of Rhythm Reader, the student said, ”As someone newer to the musical scene and in my school’s jazz band, I often find the rhythms in our songs difficult or confusing to play. While practicing with a real instrument and teacher is the best way to improve your rhythm reading, I can’t always have a teacher’s attention, and I don’t always have my guitar with me. This inspired me to create my own rhythm training app as having a tool where I could create the rhythms I play in class and get feedback immediately seemed like the second best option to me. I doubt I’m the only one who faces this challenge and so the prospect of potentially being able to help others in a similar situation as I inspired me.”




The Congressional App Challenge smashed previous participation records in 2022. All told, 9,011 students registered for this year’s competition – creating 2,707 fully-functioning apps for 335 Members of Congress across 50 states, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Mariana Islands, American Samoa, and the District of Columbia. This year’s competition set the record for most student registrations, most apps submitted, most apps per district submitted, and most districts receiving over 20 apps. The wildly successful competition continues to impress upon House Members the importance of computer science education and the need to develop a pipeline of diverse, domestic STEM talent. 


The Congressional App Challenge is an official initiative of the U.S. House of Representatives, where Members of Congress host contests in their districts for middle school and high school students, encouraging them to learn to code and inspiring them to pursue careers in computer science. Each participating Member of Congress selects a winning app from their district, and each winning team is invited to showcase their winning app to Congress during our annual #HouseOfCode festival. The program is a public-private partnership made possible through funding from Omidyar Network, AWS, Rise, theCoderSchool, Apple, and others.

The 2023 Congressional App Challenge will launch in June of 2023, and eligible students can pre-register for the competition now.