HackTJ 2k17 Website

Educating the public about what happens at HackTJ!

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Inspiration

As Freshmen, we were very interested in HackTJ. For many of us, it was our first exposure to computer science aside from classes in school. As a result, many freshmen wanted to come to HackTJ and learn more about CS, but couldn’t sign up. We decided to create a website that shared our experience, and the experience of other students, at HackTJ! We hope to help other students understand what goes on at HackTJ, and hopefully get more and more kids interested in STEM!

What it does

Our website provides an overview of our experience, and the experience of other students, at HackTJ 2k17. It is designed to inform students who were unable to participate in the various workshops and opportunities. To do this, we attended all of the workshops and documented our experiences there, and also interviewed other hackers about their experiences at HackTJ.

How we built it

We built our website using HTML5 and CSS. We also used the software Eclipse to code our website. Going to the workshops, like Ruby On Rails and Tip Calculator: Intermediate iOS Workshop, helped us learn more about computer science, and helped us with the coding and creation of our website.

Challenges we ran into

Although 22 hours is a long time to code and brainstorm for ideas, our team did not finish as quickly as we predicted. This was partly because taking pictures and attending each workshop took a large portion of our time. In the morning, we were sleepy and had to sleep in shifts.

Another challenge that we faced is with the registration of our domain with Domain.com. After learning about how we need to wait for the security clearance with the organization, we decided to create separate web pages that are not linked to the internet. Hopefully, in the future, we can work with Domain.com to continue building our project and make it accessible to other interested students! However, for this competition, we were able to overcome this challenge by learning how to use GitHub to submit our project. Through GitHub, we were able to create a page with a URL, so that our project could be accessed by anyone!

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are very proud of our website, and how far we’ve come as a team. We started out as just a team with an idea, and created into a product within the time given. Even though not every member of our team was experienced in HTML, going to the workshops and learning from each other allowed us to create a fully functional website that achieved our goal in the short time given. Our website is helpful to others, and this is one of the many reasons why we are proud of what we created. We are also proud of everything we learned as a team, from new aspects of web development to how to maneuver with GitHub. We also had fun attending the workshops!

What we learned

Our team believes that HackTJ was a very educational experience and that we have learned so much through the short time we have been here. This was a great chance to learn more about different languages and ideas at workshops, along with actually applying our knowledge into something we cared about. For example, we learned the basics of HTML and CSS, since at the start only one of our team members knew how to work with the two languages. Because the Wifi was a problem, we quickly adapted from working on Google Drive to flash drives that were passed between computers. While dealing with different challenges within our project, we found that GitHub would be a great source to showcase our project. We reached out to the mentors to help us with GitHub, so that our project could be accessed by everyone with the URL. Along with learning more about computer science and different web development strategies, we learned how to work as a team to create something that useful and helpful to others in a short period of time. Also, with workshops such as in the Women In Tech Panel, we were able to learn about the struggles and triumphs of people in the workforce, and how we can use our passion to pursue more in the future.

What's next for HackTJ 2k17 Website

We hope that in the future, we will be able to refine our CSS skills and make our website look more professional and functional. One way that we can do this is to work with Domain.com to create our web pages into a functional website that can be accessed by everyone! Another possible idea is to have a cumulative HackTJ website, which will showcase various years of HackTJ. It would be so interesting to see HackTJ’s progression of the next few years!

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