Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Teen’s app helps make travel safer
MEDHA Gupta sometimes felt uneasy making the 20-minute walk from the corner where the school bus dropped her off to her home in Virginia, US – especially during the winter when it would get dark early.
Her mother had a suggestion: write an app.
Divya Gupta was half-kidding but Medha, a pupil at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, took the challenge seriously.
So she went to work.
“I knew I had a problem I needed to solve,” said Medha, 16.
The result was Safe Travel, an app designed by Medha to help commuters feel more secure when travelling alone. Using their iPhone (the app is only compatible with iOS), a person can programme it to send an alert to someone they trust if they don’t arrive at a destination within a certain time.
It was the first iOS app that Medha had created. It’s a programme language she wasn’t wellversed in, so she didn’t think much would come of the project. But her effort caught the eyes of judges for America’s annual Congressional App Challenge, who selected her as the winner for her district.
“We were elated,” said her father, Manmohan, who has a computer engineering background.
The App Challenge is designed to encourage students to consider careers in science, technology, engineering and maths by experimenting with coding and computer science.
“This contest is about building the jobs of the future,” said Rachel Decoste, executive director of the App Challenge.
This year, more than 4 100 learners submitted nearly 1 300 apps.
“We are always delighted to see the talent that our pupils demonstrate through the annual Congressional App Challenge,” said Comstock. The app challenge is managed by the non-profit Internet Education Foundation. Winning students are invited to attend a reception on Capitol Hill in April and received $250 (almost R3 000) in Amazon Web Service credits.
Troy Murphy, public policy manager with the Northern Virginia Technology Council, who served as one of the judges for the competition, said while the entries were all impressive, he ultimately voted for Medha’s app because it “dealt with an important and pressing problem”.
Murphy said he was impressed by Medha’s technical expertise. Decoste said students who entered the challenge were encouraged to think creatively and work individually or in teams. Some have created games, and others, like Medha, have tackled health and transportation issues.
Medha didn’t have the congressional challenge in mind when she designed her app.
Like many other tech- savvy teens, she said she’s always thinking about how she could use technology to solve everyday problems.
She’s already familiar with several programming languages, having participated in several “hackathons”, where students come together to tackle problems using technology.
She said it also helped that she’s a bit “obsessed” with her iPhone. But that obsession comes with an upside: the desire to understand what powers the apps that she finds so addictive. It’s just who she is.
“Since I’m so obsessed with my phone, I wanted to learn how each app ran and what went into creating them,” Medha said.
Designing the app meant squeezing it into an already jam-packed schedule of classes and after-school activities that range from studying Indian classical dance to teaching young students how to code. Some days, she skipped lunch with her friends or spent nights curled up in a sofa in her family’s home typing furiously on her laptop.
“I thought she was on Facebook,” Divya told a visitor, laughing. “She was sitting there for hours.” – Washington Post.