Central by Central

An online platform targeted at high-school students, designed to simplify the sharing of questions and answers, to help students study and thus foster student growth!

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Inspiration

It's 2021. In these trying times where only the web could tie all of us together, our high school has unfortunately made the decision to switch to a new online management system. Needless to say, we all hated it.

We felt like our voices weren't being heard, our questions weren't being answered, and who knows? Maybe this would make our 99.95 just slip away! We were all having troubles without a teacher to explain the calculus question listed in our textbook! We were all having difficulties without a teacher to explain how circular motions work in our physics' study design!

And thus, Central was born: an all-in-one platform for VCE-level question exchanges and quiz creation made out of spite.

What it does

Central is focused on providing a platform for students to collaborate, share and test their abilities within all subjects offered from years 9 to 12. In Central, students can:

  • Share questions from a textbook, class quiz or test
  • Create a personalised test for themselves from all the uploaded questions of other students
  • Discuss possible solutions to a specific question with other students and school teachers
  • Browse popular questions within a certain subject

How we built it

  • We have collaborated extensively using Microsoft Teams and Github.
  • Limnu has been used to create the mock-up, as well as rough plans of the user interface.
  • The front-end has been built using React libraries, JavaScript, HTML and CSS.
  • The back-end has been built with Python and Flask.

Challenges we ran into

  • It's our first taste at web developement for all of us, and we didn't know what we were doing most of the time. But we got there by the end!
  • Time constraints. Two days certainly wasn't optimal, but it was enough to get a structural prototype working! However, that does mean a few of the core features had to be thrown out of the window, including replying to questions, saving questions, logging in, and creating quizzes based on saved questions.
  • Finding a suitable CSS template for the project was sure a hassle. Good thing that our website doesn't look like a plain HTML page!

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • We've made something that is usable!
  • Our collaboration was absolutely flawless and excellent!
  • We have all learnt more about our fields of specialisation: CSS, Flask, API development, whatever it may be!
  • We made a server runtime just for Central. Amazing!

What we learned

  • JavaScript is bad.
  • Python and CSS are good.
  • Hackerthons are fun.
  • It really says a lot about the current management system that our school is using, when a group of high-schoolers could make something even better than that in a weekend.

What's next for Central

  • Finish all of our intended features that has been left out due to shortage of time!
  • Integrate it with Microsoft API, which could link it to our school accounts. Or, alternatively, link it with Google and make it available to all high-school students.
  • Our original idea also included the ability to upload full tests and let students have live discussions based on it with teachers. This shall be implemented after updating the file-upload features in Central.
  • And, finally, sell Central to our school! Our current school website was revamped by a past student. Maybe we could get a deal from our beloved school as well? Who knows!
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