Inspiration
As a Computer Science and Mathematics Education major, I am passionate about education and with creating technology that helps both teachers and students. While taking a course in Education, I was given a list of grades and I was expected to calculate certain statistical values regarding those grades. It got me thinking that doing those calculations once wasn't such a big deal, but doing them regularly and with hundreds of grades was a hard job for teachers that could be simplified with a program. This is where the inspiration for creating Grade Stats came. The inspiration for Twitter Classrooms came from attending Twitter workshops. I learned they had a lot of useful tools to offer and I began to brainstorm ideas on how those tools could be applied to education.
What it does
Better Teaching has 2 tools: Grade Stats and Twitter Classroom. Grade Stats collects a list of grades and then calculates: the range, median, standard deviation, variance, and average. Twitter Classroom links Better Teaching with Twitter. Because a large amount of the population comunicate through Twitter (especially students), why can't teachers communicate with their students through this social network from a "classroom" account? Directly from Better Teaching, the teacher is able to update the students with HW assignments, upcoming tests, or any important event.
How I built it
First I divided the problem into different sections. I worked with Grade Stats, creating a separate algorithm for solving the different statistical values and then writing the code. Later I worked with Twitter Classroom. I worked with Java language and Android Studio. I also used Google and Youtube as resources.
Challenges I ran into
The most challenging part for me was creating Twitter Classroom. I had trouble installing the Twitter Fabric and at some point I altered my code in a way that I had to start from the beginning because it wouldn't run.
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
I am very proud of myself because these 24 hours have been filled with completely new experiences for me. This was my first hackathon event. I decided to work alone because I wanted to challenge myself and see how much I could get done. This was also the first time I ever worked mobile development, Android Studio, Java and API's. I had a lot of fun and I met many nice people. I am definitely returning next year.
What I learned
I learned a lot of new things. I didn't know anything about mobile development but it was something I was very interested in. I learned about many tools that I will be definitely be working with in the future.
What's next for Better Teaching
Better Teaching is not done yet. I plan to include more tools that will help teachers. One I have in mind also involves Twitter. My goal is to link Better Teaching with Twitter DM where students can send there teachers pictures of specific doubts they have in a HW and the teacher will get a notification as soon he/she receives that image. By notifying the teacher immediately about any doubts, the teacher will be able to clear up that doubt fast and the student will be able to move on with the HW or lesson with that knowledge and not have any confusions that migh hurt him/her in lessons in the future.
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