Speas students go up (to the 22nd floor) and out (to Romania)

Ten Speas Elementary students hung out at Small Footprint on Friday, a visit that took them up and out from their normal day.

Small Footprint builds web, mobile and distributed software applications for companies around the world. Their U.S. offices are on the 22nd floor of the Winston Tower, so Speas students found themselves face-to-face with the top of the Reynolds Building.

Then the students sat in with Small Footprints staff as they met with their counterparts in Romania via videoconference.

Steve Vest, a former teacher and assistant principal in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools who is now the user experience engineer at Small Footprints, led the students through introductions, as the staff described their roles and some of the apps they’ve developed – including one that allows chicken catchers who pick up chickens by their feet four at a time to count how many chickens they’ve caught.

Students also got to experiment with a mobile app that Small Footprints is working on that allows people to do teacher observations.