CSC322.01 2016F, Class 02: About the Projects ============================================= _Overview_ * Preliminaries. * Admin. * Upcoming Work. * Extra Credit. * Questions. * The Projects * Text Notification System * Resource Portal * Board Bank * Grant Application Management Preliminaries ------------- ### Admin ### Upcoming Work * Strengths Finder * When assigned a project, find the codebase ### Good Things to Do #### Academic * Alcohol Town Hall (11 am or 7pm) * CS Table Tuesday! Hear about what your peers have been up to. * CS Extras Thursday. * Learning From Alumni Thursday. #### Peer ### Questions The Projects ------------ *Current, past, and simulated students will come and talk about their projects.* * What is the project? * Who is the client? * In what stage is the project? (Just beginning, nearing completion, somewhere in between.) * What do you expect people to focus on this semester? * Why should someone want to work on this project? Project 1: Text Notification System (AM) ---------------------------------------- What is the project? A text notification system. We need instructors to communicate with parents conveniently. Most parents do not have regular computer access, so email is not good. Phones are slow. Who is the client? For our local Head Start program. Provides preschool services for students who would not otherwise be able to attend preschool. MICA. MICA tech staff. (Plan ahead!) State of the project: Working with Twillio, which allows us to send messages. We are on version 0.9. Focus on: Release of the program (1.0) Needs more testing! Rollout to a real server (or negotiation of such). Handling multi-lingual communications, so that teachers can write in English and the messages will go out in the native language of the parents (or perhaps in both languages). Why: Hippest project. Works with cool SMS APIs and other TLAs. (APIs are the future of CS.) You will likely be able to ship the product this semester. Codebase is pretty well covered with tests. Code is "relatively" clean. Make a difference in the lives of families. Members of team on campus include Alex, Leah G. Project 2: Resource Portal (BC) ------------------------------- What is the project? Online respository of information to help those with lower SES in this region and neighboring regions. Who is the client? MICA. State of the project: Almost ready to go for Powesheik, probably needs rearchitecting for multiple counties. Focus on: Annoying back-end stuff (e.g., certificate, DNS). Extending to multiple counties. Figuring out more. Why: Help people. Could go statewide. Blake will provide support, and Blake is awesome. Project 3: Board Bank (SR) -------------------------- What is the project? A service that allows people interested in serving on boards of nonprofits and those boards to find matches. People indicate interests and skills. Boards search for people to match. Who is the client? Greater Poweshiek Community Foundation. State of the project: Minimum viable product - the project has a working database that can be viewed from the website in a nice way. (No more errors!) Focus on: Improving search capability and design to make it similar to GPCF website. Also, a more comprehensive test suite would be nice. (We lack documentation.) Finally, our client wants us to expand the capabilities. (Excited about using it as a more general volunteer system.) Why: Currently, the project is fairly organized and simple, so getting into the project shouldn't be that difficult. Also, it's got a good directory structure that will help you learn how Ruby on Rails works as a web development framework. Anything else: Read the README that contains helpful information about installing the project to your machine. Elasticsearch can be a pain in your rear end, but Google is your friend. Your alumni mentor will gladly help you with any issues that you come across, so don't hesitate to ask! Questions: Why don't they just use VolunteerMatch? (Not yet in Grinnell?) Project 4: Grant Application Management (SR) -------------------------------------------- What is it? What it sounds like. Web site where granting organizations can post grant opportunities, people can submit grant applications, and organizations can have reviewers collaboratively comment on applications. Client: GPCF (also alum, I think) State: MVP, just need to configure some things Work on: add features to the backend as requested, add javascript improve UI experience Why: If you want to work on something relatively clean and done. If you want to do maintenance. Nicole is nice to work with and very supportive. Anything else: I don't really think GAMP should be the only thing a group does during a semester. It's far too done.