OpenDoor

Inspiration

In the US alone, there are over 2.3 Million First generation immigrant or undocumented higher-education students, many of which are FGLI. This includes students who come from abroad, whether as refugees or immigrants seeking a new home. One of the biggest barriers that students face in new countries is communication. When Mano came to the US, this was one of his biggest issues. Although he was eventually able to overcome this, it took him years to become fluent in English. With our app, we hope all people can overcome this obstacle quicker, become fluent in English, and be able to communicate with people around them. Our name comes from “Opened Doors” or opportunities that can be achieved once someone learns English.

We came up with the idea while playing CounterStrike2 together the night before the opening ceremony of the Hackathon. On our team was a Russian student who recently moved to America and was having trouble speaking English. We realized just how many people run into this issue, so we were very excited when the prompt was released and we could put our idea to life.

What it does

Our app teaches students English from their native language. It uses AI to teach them about the subject, then once they are ready they get tested on it. Due to this revolutionary AI technology, lessons and tests can be adjusted based on the user’s goals, native language, and current English level.

How we built it

We built our app in the VSCode editor. We used Github to store all of our code. Our frontend was done using ReactJS, a new framework for us. Our backend was done in Python and some JavaScript, and we integrated the ChatGPT API to teach and test students.

Challenges we ran into

Some of our biggest issues include learning how to use ReactJS, a foreign framework to all of us. Another challenge that we had to tackle was getting the ChatGPT API to work and function as we wanted. We also had to learn how to use Git and Github to push our code from our editor.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are very proud of how our project was able to come together and the general feel of our app. We are also proud of ourselves for our dedication to this project as we all worked on discord calls for hours each day to get our website to look and function as good as possible.

What we learned

While building this app, we all learned a lot about React, Python, and Javascript, as well as how to work cooperatively in a team. We also learned how to use Github as none of us have ever used it before in this sense.

What's next for OpenDoor

Due to how big of an impact we believe OpenDoor could have if it were made mainstream, we want to continue working to develop the website. This includes polishing up the website, and refining all the little details we have not had the time to implement yet. We would also like to add support for more languages, despite already doing the top 28 languages that are most common for US immigrants. Overall, we would like to bring the website to all people for free to help everyone learn English

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