Inspiration
Many parents have felt the panic of arriving at school to pick up their children to find that their son or daughter is no longer there because they already got on the bus or began to walk home by themselves. This miscommunication between schools and parents can potentially be very dangerous due to the risks of kidnapping and traffic accidents. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 30.4% of parents identify traffic-related danger, and 11.7% identify crime danger and barriers to student transportation. Because of this, we developed SafetyGo, a simple, flexible, yet reliable solution that will help facilitate communication between school faculty and parents to ensure that students are where they need to be.
What it does
SafetyGo is a mobile application that allows parents and teachers to communicate regarding the students' mode of transportation back home. The application allows the user to create an individual login account based on their role, and will only grant the user access if the username as well as the password are entered correctly.
For teachers: Teachers can create an account, and gain access to their roster by entering the school they are working at, as well as the Homeroom number. Once logged in, teachers will be able to access their Homeroom's roster, their Emergency Contact Directory, as well as edit their own personal information.
-In the main menu, teachers will be able to see their full roster, interact with each individual student's profile, as well as search up names from their roster. Student profiles will include their full name, their mode of transportation for the day, their bus route, and their emergency contact.
-They can view what parents have selected as the students' mode of transportation the child will be taking to get home after school each day. Most importantly, teachers will have the option to select between two buttons: Picked up or Still at school. This will communicate the whereabouts of the student to the parents, and will serve as part of a two-way verification system to ensure that students are picked up by the parent or a trusted individual, or has boarded the correct bus.
For parents: Parents can create an account, and add their children's full name in order to place them on their SafetyGo watchlist. Once logged in, parents will be able to read announcements from the school, as well as view the student's homeroom teacher's contact information.
-Parents can communicate the selected mode of transportation for each day using a calendar feature. Once updated, the calendar will indicate what was selected, such as traveling by bus, walking home, or picked up by a guardian. If the student is traveling home by bus, the parent can see the bus number and route they are supposed to board, the bus driver's contact information, as well as their current location displayed by a GPS map. Most importantly, if the teacher has clicked the Picked up button on their own account for the student, the parent will be able to see and confirm that the student is on their way home.
-If the parents have chosen to have the student picked up by car, they can add information for a verified vehicle, such as the license plate, the model, the color, the guardian's information, as well as any other notable characteristics that will help facilitate identification.
How I built it
SafetyGo's techstack is Bootstrapped with HTML, CSS, and Javascript. Some members wrote their code in Visual Studio Code, while others utilized the online platform codepen.io.
Challenges I ran into
Some of our team members were not very familiar with HTML, CSS, and Javascript, but we tackled that by helping them learn and build an HTML base structure, and then passing the file onto more experienced members to add CSS styling, as well as Javascript functionality.
Another challenge we had was due to the fact that one member's Visual Studio Code was malfunctioning, so she had to move and build her part of SafetyGo on codepen.io. This led to some discrepancy, especially when connecting the separate HTML files together, since function names as well as .HTML files referenced were not under the same names. However, we resolved this by testing the app and communication to find out where the issue was.
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
We are especially proud of our members who, despite having minimal exposure and knowledge to HTML, CSS, and Javascript, were extremely quick to adapt and pick up these languages to build, test, and deploy SafetyGo.
What I learned
We learned how to create and use Javascript functions to verify a user's credentials, alert the user if their login information is correct or not, and to link and connect between different pages throughout the application.
What's next for SafetyGo
In the future, we hope that SafetyGo will be more optimized, and will allow teachers to cross off students that were already picked up to facilitate their end of the school dismissal management process. We also hope to implement a GPS system that will help parents track their children's whereabouts if they are taking the bus.Please keep an eye out for SafetyGo's growth!
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