by by Ethan M. Forman of Jewish Journal of Greater Boston
Last October, Brynn Berkowitz’s fifth grade extra-credit math assignment involved graphing her large Halloween candy haul.
The school math challenge spurred Brynn and her father, David – who has an interest in computer programming – to create an app called “Haullo,” which adults and kids can download to turn trick-or-treating into an interactive game.
Brynn, now 11, lives in Needham and is a sixth grader at The Rashi School, a Reform Jewish school of about 240 students, pre-kindergarten through eighth grade, in Dedham.
Father and daughter are rolling out their new app just in time for Halloween. (It’s available on the App Store and Google Play.)
Brynn’s dad is a former clinical pharmacist and pharmacy administrator, who manages a medication information database for a healthcare company. About 15 years ago, while working in a large healthcare system, he taught himself programming and data science to help solve problems, consolidate data and save time to help improve patient outcomes.
He did so in the spirit of tikkun olam. “I want to leave the world a better place, so I’m really motivated to solve problems,” he said.
Brynn, who dressed as Elmo last year and plans to go out as a starfish this year, said last year’s math problem asked students to graph their candy, by how many and what type, among other things.
She showed her dad the problem. He asked her if she wanted to make an app out of it, and they came up with an early version.
“I just like to automate things,” David said.
Brynn said the app’s main feature lets users take a picture of their candy haul using their cellphone or smart tablet, and the app counts and sorts it.
The app also has an interactive map so users can tell which houses have candy.
The program also features challenges called “gauntlets,” Brynn said.
“The gauntlet is a mini game where kids within a quarter mile from the person who activated it can race against each other to collect a certain amount of candy within 15 minutes,” David said in an email. “The kid with the most candy after 15 minutes wins a special champion badge.”
The app not only counts, sorts and scores candy, it ranks players against their school, grade, state and nation to answer the question about who is the world’s best trick-or-treater.
The map allows adults to see where other adults are, but kids are not tracked on the map. It also has different tags, letting users know which house is offering, for example, full size candy bars.
There is even a feature to help kids find a way to donate their candy, and math problems to solve.
Brynn said she likes how the app “levels up Halloween.”
Coming up with a name for the app proved challenging. The suggestion of calling it “Treat Street” turned up a candy company with the same name, so they could not use it. They eventually settled on Haullo, which is a play on the concept that trick-or-treat candy is a kid’s haul.
It took David Berkowitz close to a year to build out the app, with help from AI tools. “I had this vision that it would be a fun family project on the weekends,” he said. Since he likes to build things, he thought it would be good to teach his kids about building a business, he added.
The Berkowitz family includes Chase, 15, a student at Needham High who helped with the app’s marketing; mom Kim Stone, who serves as director of development at The Rashi School; and their dog, Rosie.
“It’s been a labor of love,” Kim said about the app.
“At Rashi we don’t celebrate Halloween,” she added. “Purim is our Halloween.” But many students do take part in Halloween in their respective cities and towns. Kim said she planned to highlight the app in the school’s weekly digital newsletter as “a Rashi math story” since it grew out of a math problem and shows how Rashi teaches students to think critically.
“It’s a good example of the Rashi curriculum,” she said.