Six girls in the GPS 8th grade won the Verizon App Innovative Learning contest
A collaborative group of girls in the GPS Middle School has been selected as “Best in State” for their entry into the Verizon App Innovative Learning contest. The nationwide contest challenged middle and high school students to design mobile app concepts aimed at improving and solving for societal issues in their schools and communities.
Each of the six girls receives a free computer tablet from Verizon, and the school receives $5,000 for their winning submission.
The eighth graders on the team include Priyanka Sud, Annie Thrash, Lainey Maddox, Abby Young, Mo Calhoun, and Jane Porfiri. Their app, Ripple, addresses loneliness associated with mental illness, offering comfort, chat rooms, discussion boards, and a place to track day-to-day moods. Ripple also offers a customizable digital koi fish that app users can feed and name, and with which they can share emotions.
“Many apps for mental health are expensive, but we want ours to be free in order to help more people,” says the students’ accompanying essay. The Digital Makers class is taught by Jill Pieritz, chair of the GPS computer science department.
Verizon developed the national contest to encourage students to learn teamwork, creative problem solving, and entrepreneurial skills as the develop app concepts. On the contest website, Verizon says that about half of the winning students are female and that the competition has engaged 3,500 teams from all 50 states and the District of Columbia.