Rethinking The Pass

Logging in as Thomas
Late to class! Requesting a pass
Login Screen
Logging in as Mr. Adam
Looking at all the passes requested by Thomas
Looking at all the passes requested to Mr. Adam
Mr. Adam accepted student Adam's pass!

Inspiration

As high school students, we see paper passes used almost every day, whether for being late to school, going to the bathroom, or a variety of other reasons. In a world where everything can be made—and often is made—digital, we can save time and help the environment by creating this process online. Rethinking The Pass does just this: it is simple, fast, and clean.

What it does

Rethinking The Pass gives users the ability to ask for passes, adding the teacher to send the request to and a note/reason for the request. Additionally, users may see all of the passes that they have requested and the status, i.e. whether or not the teacher accepted it and a note that he/she wrote about it. The teacher, in turn, can see all of the requests sent to him/her and write notes on them, as well as accept them. Each request also has the time of the request. All of this happens quickly, allowing for real-time speed.

How we built it

Rethinking The Pass is a website with Javascript, jQuery, HTML, and CSS for the front-end, and Firebase for the back-end database.

Challenges we ran into

Initially, instead of Firebase, we were planning on using Amazon Web Services, but after a long time tinkering with it, and ultimately failing to get it to work, we decided to use Firebase. We struggled a lot with Firebase as well, being able to connect, read, and add/set data (whilst not erasing data!). There were also many bugs dealing with Javascript, mostly with its synchronous functions, that we took time to deal with.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Ultimately, Rethinking The Pass is a relatively complete product, and can be ready for use with only minor touchups. Its functionality is complete and its presentation is simple for users. We had to figure out how to do numerous actions with Firebase, and integrating those actions with synchronous Javascript was a huge accomplishment.

What we learned

We were the only people who did not come as a team, and half of us had never been to a hackathon before, so we learned a lot about working with people, and coding in general. Being able to integrate various skill sets was a challenge, and learning new skills while brushing up old ones was a valuable experience. Our experiences over the past 24 hours will definitely be valuable in future coding excursions and hackathons.

What's next for Rethinking The Pass

Schools (and businesses, etc.) require many functions, more than pass-writing, from scheduling classes, to grades, to teachers being able to communicate with students... while Rethinking The Pass definitely serves its own unique function, we think that it would be better used if it provided teachers and students (and eventually administration) with more ways to interact.