Introduction
The following is a list of potential app ideas that could be built out if we can find an audience to interview for feature development and prioritization.
In no particular order…
Scavenger Hunt
Expanding on the Scavenger Hunt app that we started to develop in the first module of this course.
Talking Forest
Ms. Dalrymple’s idea – a way to tell the story of the Northcote and main LCS campuses through walking.
Involves using geo-fencing to activate content within an app based on where a person (or more accurately, their phone) is located.
Here is the 3-minute video shared in class and a written overview of the app as authored for a conservation area in the Lindsay area.
Lakefield History
Mr. Michael Chappell from the LCS community is looking for an app to be a self-guided exploration of historic parts of Lakefield.
Uses geolocation, like the Talking Forest and Scavenger Hunt apps described above, to show content based on a person’s location in the village of Lakefield.
School Life Guide
Updating Sihan Chen’s School Life Guide app to use a database and present current school policies.
Musicals @ LCS
Updating functionality and adding this year’s content to the Musicals @ LCS app.
This is a great opportunity to see how an app of significant size and complexity is organized.
The database schema is something you might not normally otherwise see until second or third year university (although, to be honest, it’s not hard once you are talked through it).
Mailroom Assistant
An app to scan barcodes and allow the Reception team at LCS to automatically notify LCS community members when a package is waiting for them.
When the package is picked up, the community member just needs to scan the package label and it will be automatically signed out.
Will require use of a cloud-hosted database (Supabase).
Check In
An app that scans QR codes printed on the back of LCS keycards.
A faculty member will use the app to check-in students to breakfast in the Dining Hall, and potentially in other locations such as Math Hub, the Evening Support Program, Saturday Study, or within groups during Intersession Days or on field trips.
When the QR code is scanned, information about which student checked-in is sent to a cloud-hosted database (Supabase).
Alumni Stories
Quoting from an email, a follow-up to a conversation with Mr. Blake Walker, who works in Admissions at LCS:
Thanks for taking a couple of minutes this afternoon to reconnect over the [app] for capturing LCS Stories that first popped up during our strategic planning session with Anne Marie and Rhoda. Before coming to LCS, I was just about to launch a similar tool at Ridley. We were just going to collect the stories in an Excel file. I’m really excited by your idea to work with your computer science students to create an app to collect the stories. This would make searching for relevant stories so much easier.
In Admissions, we find that sharing an inspiring story is always a much more memorable way to communicate information, but as [Admissions] officers we only capture a small number of the stories out there. With this app I see the potential to capture stories from alumni at on- and off-campus events as well as current students. From an Admissions perspective, here are the search criteria that would be very useful to be able to sort stories by:
- Year / decade
- Community segment (academic, sport, activity, club, House)
- Male / female /Â non-binary
- theme (humorous, transformative experience, forming connections, moments of personal pride, etc.)
- Geographic region (local/day, Ontario, Canada, all countries)
- Grade (9, 10, 11 or 12)
Ideally, it would be great to brainstorm this further in an Admissions/Development-wide meeting, but I think this is a great place to start.