Brevard high schooler takes national computing award for creating AI literacy platform
It's a question April Surac, a Cocoa resident and junior at West Orange High School in Orange County, has been exploring with Bookoli, a platform she created to help identify students' reading challenges and help them improve their skills.
The program, powered by AI, started as a project for a science fair back in September. Since then, it's grown to include users testing it across 10 schools. And most recently, her creation of the platform made her one of 40 high schoolers to win the national 2025 NCWIT Aspirations in Computing Award.
"When I first heard that I won the award, I was really shocked," April said. "II was really shocked, but also relieved. I was surprised in a good way."
With the platform, and her education beyond high school, she hopes to continue addressing students' literacy needs.
The idea for the project took root when April noticed the test scores at her school reflected students' low literacy rates.
"I know that in my area where I go to school, particularly in my county, 50% of students perform below proficiency in reading, meaning our test scores aren't really good," she said.
It was an issue her teachers tried to address: Every week, the students would go to the library and write book reports. But ultimately, she said, the scores didn't improve. That's what inspired her to create Bookoli.
Using AI, the platform checks each user's comprehension as they read to develop questions to ask about the book they're reading.
"The aim of the platform is to get students to read full books and to also recall book details, develop their comprehension skills and make sure they're staying focused," she said. "We want to make them to feel interested in that book."
Right now, the program is being tested among students. Surac hopes eventually to launch it as a mobile app.
And the 2025 NCWIT Aspirations in Computing Award will help her pursue her goals of expanding Bookoli.
In March, she attended the award ceremony in Charlotte, North Carolina. Her favorite part? Connecting with other honorees.
"A lot of them are going to top schools like MIT, and they were just incredible to hear from," she said. "They all did really, really impactful projects, and they were also people of my age and they're female ... so it was just really inspiring to hear and then meeting those people, and as well as executives from companies."
The award came with a $500 grant to go toward Bookoli, as well as a Mac computer.
April has big dreams: In addition to expanding Bookoli, she wants to major in electrical engineering and neuroscience at a top engineering school, though she isn't sure which one yet.
But getting here wasn't easy. Before she won the award, April didn't have her own laptop and had to use the one provided by her school to build Bookoli. Neither of her parents come from a background in technology: Her father is a carpenter, and her mother is a seamstress. And there weren't many people she could rely on in real life to help with her project.
It made her anxious about trying to create Bookoli.
"I felt like I didn't have enough experience to make something of my own," she said. "I didn't have a team of people. I didn't have a private mentor to teach me coding or to work with me on a project."
But through some ingenuity, she found help: She got in touch with another teen online who was able to review her coding.
"I asked him certain things about, like, how can I improve my platform?" she said. "And he looked at my code; we actually went on three calls together, and it was really helpful."
Her advice for other students in a similar situation is not to wait for mentors to come to you, but rather to seek them out, whether that be at school or through platforms like LinkedIn.
"If it's your calling, or if it's something you're really passionate about, you're going to be able to do it," she said, adding that it's important to overcome the fear of reaching out to professionals who might be able to offer advice for a project.
"If you don't have mentors around, you can definitely reach toward the internet, which I think is what we take for granted, and you can get that opportunity."
Finch Walker is the education reporter at FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Walker at fwalker@floridatoday.com. X: @_finchwalker.
This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Brevard teen earns national computing award for AI literacy program
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