OpenOK

Inspiration

I was inspired by several things. First of all, in the Wisconsin Autonomous Vehicle student organization, our team lead struggles to provide us with the resources and proper guidance we need to train and deploy our own computer vision neural networks. I have previously considered the idea of all the students in the group building a repository of resources, libraries, tutorials, and code that we all can use to learn better. However, there is only one other person in the subteam, so that is impossible for me right now.

I was also inspired by a tik-tok I saw about how college weed-out classes in the STEM fields force students to drop out of STEM fields. There is a huge progressive push for 'women and minorities in STEM' but if they (along with other low-income students from non-stem backgrounds) are being restricted by weed-out classes from succeeding, then it is important for them to develop the skills they need on their own outside of college. My dad didn't have a major in computer science, but he was able to get a computer science job by showing a remarkable project he made to the hiring board. With this vein of logic, I decided that the best way for people to demonstrate their competence to companies without necessarily having the 'right' degree was to create a platform to help people create remarkable projects of their own.

I had read Chris Hadfield's book "An Astronaut's Guide to Earth", and I had really enjoyed the part where he described how NASA keeps a record of all the problems that astronauts have ever encountered in space so that future astronauts can learn from the experiences of others and prepare themselves for the unknown. Something about this resonated with my idea of learning, where you follow the experiences of others who have experimented, made mistakes, and found solutions to the problems that you are bound to face in the future. This is what made me put an emphasis on the idea of course creators considering the roadblocks and obstacles for others to avoid and giving people that information.

I had also run into a high school student who wanted advice on how to proceed so that he could learn computer science, create cool projects, and get into a good college. From speaking with him, I had realized that I needed to try creating a platform in which people like him are able to create amazing projects without spending lots of boring setup time and risking getting bored and quitting after a while, like I have done a lot in the past.

What it does

It is a platform in which users are able to create courses on creating cool projects or learning niche skills, like getting research opportunities as an undergrad.

Users can upload a course by describing the steps they took in creating the project, the problems the encountered, how they overcame those problems, and video tutorials from YouTube explaining how to get certain parts of the project set up.

They can share these projects, and other users can view these courses for free

How I built it

I built it by using Django. I first created a Django project and then configured it to run with AWS Elastic Beanstalk.

Challenges I ran into

I had trouble setting up a virtual environment. I had never used AWS, Django, or Html before, so I had to work pretty hard to get familiar with that. I kept running into mistakes with Django and the sqlite database. I also had trouble with setting up the AWS server with Elastic Beanstalk. It took me several hours trying to get it set up, and a lot of the tutorials were for Mac/Unix users while I had a windows laptop and was unfamiliar with Command Prompt. I had to get familiar with that pretty quickly.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I had never touched AWS, Django, or Python before, and when I chose this project to work on, I was jumping head-first into unknown territory for me. However, I managed to learn a lot during this project and create a working minimum viable product that could display courses other people create. I was never really interested in website making before, but in the pursuit of creating a difficult project at the edge of my abilities, I felt awesome as every few hours, I got a part of the project working and I got closer to a functioning website. I am glad that I dedicated time for this hackathon and trying something completely new when I didn't need to.

What I learned

I learned a lot about setting up websites and working with Django and AWS. I created a website from zero knowledge, which is pretty cool. However, a big thing I learned was to deal with frustrating programming situations. There were several times where I had no idea what to do and was absolutely stuck. During those times when I felt hopeless, I took a break from working on the project to run outside, do chores, or make food for myself, and when I came back, I had a fresh perspective. That ability to reset my perspective is something that I need to practice a lot in the future but can be invaluable for me later in my life.

What's next for OpenOK

I will continue working on the MVP by improving the UI and capabilities. I will first create content templates, add users, and improve the security measures of the website.

Built With

• amazon-web-services
• django
• elastic-beanstalk
• html
• python