Tuesday, March 17, 2015

Bully Hotspot

We are part of the ProjectCSGirls competition for 2014-15. The competition requires you to come up with a problem in your community and a solution for it. You then build a solution as a prototype. Other parts of the submission include a video that demos your solution and a report about the experience.

Our team is called Echotech. We chose the theme "A Safer World" for our project. The problem we are aiming to solve is bullying that happens in schools. Specifically, we want to target the individual places where incidents occur, for example, the hallway, lunch room, or playground. To combat this problem, we have designed an app that will allow the user to anonymously submit data about the time and place of the incident they observed. Also built into the app is a feature that allows administrators to view these submissions and place supervisors in areas with the most incidents to intervene. We call our app Bully Hotspot.

We had a ton of fun doing the project. Probably our favorite day of the whole process was filming the video. We would rehearse, get everything memorized, and start filming, and then a teacher or student would walk in front of the camera! Also, we often forgot our lines or started laughing during a take. If other girls are considering doing the project, I think our team would recommend it even if the only thing we did was film our video! Even though the filming was a little rocky, our video turned out great! You can view the video by clicking on the link at the bottom of this post.

We think that our app will be very beneficial to schools struggling with a large amount of bullying incidents. Our app is very different than others that target bullying; it helps with the placement of supervisors as opposed to the identification of aggressors. It is faster and easier to navigate than other programs, and it allows the user to remain anonymous. Thank you for reading about our app and supporting ProjectCSGirls!
Here is the logo for our app!
Bully_Hotspot_Video