Inspiration
At the beginning of the Huskie Hack, our group was among the dozen or so hackers that did not have a group. Our group decided to work together on this problem, when on stage we decided it was something we all being new to the field might be able to do. With ages ranging from 13 to 27, we presented as a very diverse group with a lot of ideas and vision to offer to the project.
What it does
We have digitized the hard copy versions of evaluation guides, providing the framework to develop a user-based system that will track user's submissions, storing the data they provide in a database that can later be retrieved in both digital and physical (through PDF printing) forms.
How I built it
Using Meteor, the JavaScript app platform, we were able to create a template for each evaluation guide. While Joshua worked on the main functionality of the website, login capabilities, linking between templates, and coding, the remainder of the hackers wrote the templates, formatting them to look as similar as possible given the different ways in which data is collected on each form.
Challenges I ran into
We first attempted to use Excel to create template .xls documents that would serve as the foundation for inputting and collecting data using available Microsoft web services. We ran into issues with the limited functionality of the online
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
Several of our members learned a lot about coding, especially in HTML, with some introduction to CSS and JavaScript, which was a wonderful experience for all involved (as stressful as it was during the last few hours.) We took five pages of paper and turned it into a fully interactive website.
What I learned
When we started, no one in our group had experience using JavaScript, PHP, CSS, and a few of our hackers had minimal experience in HTML. One of our hackers, Joshua, had minimal experience using Meteor, but through vigorous searching was able to make the code functional and the web application look and function at a professional level.
What's next for Digitizing Toastmasters
Data submitted on the interactive website will be retrievable for both display on the website and printing as a PDF in the format the evaluation guides are currently in. We were unable to make all of this functionality available due to time constraints and the limited knowledge of our hackers.
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