BRONZEVILLE — When the girls in De La Salle's web development class discussed app concepts to submit to Verizon's Innovative Learning App Challenge, everyone had the same thought:
Violence.
"In Chicago, there’s a lot of violence, and a lot of innocent people get shot and killed," said Krystale Cole, 17. "We thought we should find a way to help our community."
For several weeks, the club gathered every day after school and developed an app concept called "Save Our City."
The Save Our City app would pair GPS and real time crime data, supplied by the Chicago Police Department, to let app users know if they're getting close to a crime in progress. If users are walking toward a block where a shooting erupted minutes earlier, the app will tell the user a safer route to travel.
From Jan. 1-22, there have been more slayings, shootings and people killed or wounded in shootings than during the same period in 2016 — a year that marked Chicago's bloodiest since violence marred the city in the '90s.
In first 22 days of 2017, detectives opened at least 40 murder investigations. There were about 35 people slain over the same time period last year.
Shootings are also slightly up. There were 174 shootings by this time last year, killing 36 people and wounding 186 others. This year's tally already includes 177 shootings — attacks that killed at least 37 people so far and wounded about 190.
By the time the team of five student app developers were ready to submit, they had an app that would be good enough to win the contest's "Best In State" and "Best In Region" awards.
The team won $5,000 for De La Salle, and each student — Michelle Vega, Morgan Lawson, Sydney Roberson, Krystale Cole and Alexis Leon — got a tablet computer.
The team now has a bid to win the overall contest. If that happens, the girls from De La Salle's coding club will join app developers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to make the app a reality.
Verizon will select a winner of its national contest on Feb. 16.
This is familiar territory for the De La Salle coding team.
Last year, the team won the contest's "Best In State" award for an app concept called "Furry Friend Finder." The app would allow users to post pictures of lost pets on a public board, where other app users would be able to spot a lost pet’s owner. The app could also feature a direct messaging system for pet owners to immediately reach out to each other.
"The fact that we won last year added motivation," said Morgan Lawson, 17. "We worked hard on this."
Regardless of the outcome of this year's contest, the girls' teacher is proud of her students for coming up with a concept that tries to make the city a safer one.
"It was rewarding and also kind of sad. The fact that violence is on most of their minds all the time," said Diniah Dean, the web development teacher guiding her students through the contest. "The proudest moment was when they wanted to do something about it."
