Pickup

Pickup, a mobile phone app developed by two fourth-graders, allows people to do something about the clutter they encounter on the street.

16:13 22 May 2017

Fourth-graders Callista Murphy and Bianca Morales have developed a mobile app called Pickup that allows people to do something about the clutter they encounter on the street.

 

Users can take a picture of trash using the app, which will then show the image on Google Maps, notifying authorities to stop by and clean it up.

 

“The reward is that the world doesn’t blow up,” from trash piling up, Bianca said.

 

“The reward is our wild animals remain safe in the environment,” Callista added.

 

Bianca and Callistar, who have been friends since they were babies, are involved in an after-school program called Montana Code Girls that aims to encourage girls to take up coding, the process of creating computer programs or mobile phone apps.

 

Another Billings participant, Alison Kreiter, has developed a mobile app that seeks to benefit society by making it easier to help people identify missing pets. Users who encounter a stray animal can notify a nearby animal shelter and the animal’s last known location appears on Google Maps.

 

Scott Chapman, the volunteer instructor for the program, said the girls use MIT App Inventor, a program developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.