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SAT Practice For Students, By Students
Inspiration
**SAT Practice For Students, By Students** was created by students, for fellow students to use! We drew our inspiration for this project from witnessing - first hand, as high school students - our classmates neglecting to study for standardized tests because of a fear of long, tenuous and boring study sessions. Our goal is to engage teens and make them just a bit more excited to be studying for a test that has the potential to influence so much! There are innumerable websites out there that offer SAT help, but most tend to employ techniques and writing styles that are just not kid-friendly, and which - frankly - put us to sleep! This 'professional' tone is often misplaced in SAT guides and textbooks, written by companies who just don't get it! This doesn't encourage the user to continue studying, but rather does the opposite, encouraging students to put down the textbook and browse social media or Netflix for some much-needed entertainment. That is why we created **SAT Practice For Students, By Students**. Our idea started out small, as we noticed many of our friends skipping out on studying for the SAT and other standardized tests. We wanted to create a website that would encourage them to study for the SAT or any other standardized test in a way that will keep them coming back.
What It Does
**SAT Practice For Students, By Students** was created to provide a fun and engaging method of studying for one of the most important tests that you will take in your life, the SAT. Our website is a way of being able to study for the SAT and have all of the resources that you need, all on one website. From vocabulary to reading, writing and math, our site includes features to help our users practice at ease. Each page includes important study materials and tips including links to outside resources that can help individuals further prepare for the SAT. The website also features a game that tests math and vocabulary knowledge based on questions retrieved directly from The College Board, and responds in memes whenever the question is answered!
How We Built It
**SAT Practice For Students, By Students** was created over the course of this past year, which was our junior year in high school. Since the majority of this year was spent studying for college entrance exams, we were able to channel SAT tips and tricks directly from our experiences taking standardized tests and the feedback received from our scores. In addition, as all three of us are extremely busy high school students - with Varsity sports, club leadership positions, etc. - we used an app extension on Google Drive called 'Editey' on which to code our project. This app was incredibly helpful as it allowed all of us to work on the website from different devices, at the same time, and from just about anywhere with access to WiFi. Through this app, we were also able to link multiple tabs to our site and incorporate aspects from python and javascript into our product, and even witness (in real time) the changes made to our code in a compiler.
Challenges We Ran Into
One of the many challenges that we ran into while bringing our idea to life was in coding the div wrappers. We spent many hours trying to code our site in such a way that our website footer would remain stationary at the bottom of the page, instead of move around as one scrolled up and down. Another challenge that we came across while coding was using Editey to compile our Javascript and HTML aspects in the same editor, so that we could access our site, in its entirety, online. We were finally able to figure out how to link up various tabs and incorporate the Javascript directly into our HTML body, rather than linking it from another Editey sheet. However, initially, we were having trouble getting this to work and sync up, and we were afraid that we would not be able to complete the project as Editey was the only compiler we knew of that allowed us to save our code online and edit simultaneously, from different devices and locations.
Accomplishments That We're Proud Of
We are proud that we were able to incorporate two JavaScript games into our website. We are also proud that our drive to help fellow high school students and friends do well was able to stem into an entire website about the SAT! It is such an honor to hear from our peers that the tips on our site actually helped, and that our interactive and relatable approach to tackling the SAT worked for them! This is huge for our coding team because the inspiration behind this project was noticing that many of our friends didn't really feel like they were being engaged with the material while using other review websites and textbooks, and didn't feel as if the creator of the source understood and related to their point of view, as high schoolers.
What We Learned
Over the course of this project, we learned a lot about the wide-range of capabilities that CSS has in making HTML more presentable and user friendly. None of us have ever taken a coding class or course, so everything that we learned has been from online sources and books. Therefore, until we finally were able to start our first coding project, we were not aware of the huge part that CSS plays in transforming the skeletal HTML into a graphical user interphase, or GUI. In addition, this has been our first time working with Javascript. Therefore, while creating our interactive review games, we learned as we went - creating buttons, transforming text into images, etc. Overall, we are extremely happy that we have been able to utilize online resources and books to create something that works to help our fellow students achieve their collegiate goals and ambitions!
What's Next For 'SAT Practice For Students, By Students'?
We plan to further develop our game and website by adding new aspects such as more gaming and review options as well as flashcard tools, and perhaps even transferring our website into app form, so it can be accessible on-the-go and on the school bus. We also are looking to buy a domain in order to make our site more widely accessible to high school students everywhere, because currently only our classmates, friends and family know about our site and are able to use it for review. View our code at: http://www.editey.com/file/0B1fw4eWvBLhHemZ3U0JsRkFQODA
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