Georgia DDS Checklist wins Rep. Henry “Hank” Johnson’s 2021 Congressional App Challenge in Georgia’s Fourth District
Rep. Henry “Hank” Johnson has named Niheer Patel from Brookwood High School as the winner of the 2021 Congressional App Challenge in Georgia’s Fourth District.
When asked what inspired the creation of Georgia DDS Checklist, the student said, “My main inspiration to create this app was hearing terrible stories from my peers and friends about terrible DDS experiences where they forgot critical documents and then had to wait months to get another appointment, especially in the midst of the pandemic when spots are incredibly limited. With my own appointment approaching in the near future, I wanted to ensure that no others (myself included) have to go through similar rough experiences to get their driver’s licenses. By consolidating all of the info into a single, easily-accessible place, I hope to make the DDS experience seamless.”
The 2021 Congressional App Challenge yielded 2,101 fully functioning apps. After eighteen months of disruptions to educational cadences for students everywhere, the Congressional App Challenge came roaring back with 7,174 students registering for this year’s competition. All told, 340 Members of Congress hosted Congressional App Challenges in their districts across 50 states, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Mariana Islands, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Washington, D.C.
The Congressional App Challenge is an official initiative of the U.S. House of Representatives, where Members of Congress host contests in their districts for middle school and high school students, encouraging them to learn to code and inspiring them to pursue careers in computer science. Each participating Member of Congress selects a winning app from their district, and each winning team is invited to showcase their winning app to Congress during our annual #HouseOfCode festival. The program is a public-private partnership made possible through funding from Omidyar Network, AWS, theCoderSchool, Facebook, Replit, Accenture, and others.
The 2022 Congressional App Challenge will launch in June of 2022, and eligible students can pre-register for the competition now.