A team of three 12th grade students at the Chelsea Virtual Learning Academy placed second in the prestigious CGI I.T. Girl Challenge. The team designed, coded, and built at application the helps high school upperclassmen with their postgraduate plans.

BOSTON, Mass. – A team of 12th grade female students at the Chelsea Virtual Learning Academy (CVLA), coined "The Chelsea Challengers", earned a second-place finish at the CGI I.T. Girl Challenge, an annual event that occurs in various locations across the United States. 

The Challengers are a team of three 12th-grade CVLA students and their coach, a CVLA teacher. The I.T. Girl Challenge is a mobile app challenge for high school girls that challenges teams to design and build a mobile application that supports real-world problems that the students encounter from their own experiences.

The CVLA team created "Odyssey Outlook", an app designed to help high school upperclassmen navigate their future career paths. The students utilized a mobile app development platform to construct the app, completing all the coding themselves!

Odyssey Outlook surveys its end-users to learn about the users preferred postgraduate goals. Based on the responses, it provides the user with information and resources to help them achieve their goals. Odyssey Outlook connects the user with information about colleges, trade schools and military options. It is also free of cost for the end-user.

The students presented their app, Odyssey Outlook, in front of a panel of judges in Boston

The students presented the app in front of a panel of judges, where they were assessed on the app's innovation, applicability, and creativity. This was the team's second year competing in the I.T. Girls Challenge.

This opportunity emerged for CPS' partnership with the organization Junior Achievement, a partner of CGI'S. CVLA students will be interning with both CGI and Junior Achievement as a result of this work!