News Buddies

Inspiration

According to a report published by the Pew Institute, only 6% of today's kids follow news about national and international issues very closely, and 23% follow the news fairly closely. We are the same as the majority of the kids who don't follow the news as much as regular adults. This is because often times the news that we kids receive is too complicated to understand. This is why we created NewsBuddies, an app that makes these articles more accessible for kids and personalizes the lexical complexity of headline articles based on their age.

What it does

By making top world headlines accessible and fun for kids, NewsBuddies can educate the next generation about current events and social issues early on. Understanding news is the first step toward informed action for many of these youths, and can help them make a more educated decision once they reach voting age.

NewsBuddies personalizes content based on age, ensuring a safe, inclusive environment. It supports accessibility and equity in news education for children of diverse backgrounds and learning levels, allowing them to understand the complicated news their parents talk about in an easy and exciting way.

By encouraging kids to engage with news thoughtfully, the app can inspire them to become more active and aware citizens who care about their communities and global issues.

Along with that, we built a marketing page that is accessible here.

How we built it

We built this app using Python (for algorithm testing), Dart, Flutter, HTML, CSS, JS, Ollama, and a newsapi.org API.

Challenges we ran into

We had lots of difficulty creating a Flutter environment on Mac and working with a new framework and language that we have never dealt with. Along with that, we hid trouble with retrieving content with certain articles, however we were able to overcome both of these challenges.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are especially proud of creating our first Flutter app since this is the first time we have made an app using Flutter (one of our team members made one for one of our projects in the past however we weren't involved in the app development). Along with that, we are proud that we were able to integrate multiple Natural Language Processing tools and algorithms to be able to build our final product.

What we learned

We learned that making apps and algorithms isn't always straightforward. There are lots of bugs and issues along the way, but those bugs and issues help us learn and avoid the same ones in the future. For example, once you use a tool for the first time, you can apply that same code with variations to multiple different use cases, giving you an easier way to broaden your coding skills and expanse.

What's next for News Buddies

We hope to add:

1) Database Integration

We would like to include database integration to add multi-device compatibility.

2) Hardware Integration

We would like to integrate a Raspberry Pi companion for our product that reads aloud the articles to our user and answers any questions they may have about the article.

3) Publishing

As of now, our app works locally as our Ollama model is hosted locally. However, we would like to be able to fully develop the app to be published on the App Store.

4) Reduce Media Bias

We would like to take measures in the future to implement a bias check on the articles to avoid creating an echo chamber.