February 26, 2014 at 15:17How we created Robot Pashka
"What? Which robot? Pashka ?! Why do we need him? ” - Without hiding a smile asks the rector of a famous university. “This is the same robot that helps students there,” explains his secretary. "Okay, let's see."
Yes, for more than six months now we have been working on Robot Pashka, a project of online university timetables. The article will focus on our history of the development and development of the project. The article is more general than applied and timed to launch mobile versions of schedules for iPhone and Android.
Robot Pashka is a friend and student assistant. Pashka studies only four and five because he knows his schedule and does not miss pairs. Here is his site - robotpashka.ru
Our project is a database of online timetables at universities. Besides the fact that you can simply view your schedule on the site, you can subscribe to the schedule of your study group and be aware of all changes. When the schedule changes, an automatic notification is sent to all students of the group via email, Vkontakte messages, and mobile push notifications.
Thus, the project allows you to stay abreast of your schedule anywhere, monitor its changes (for example, “change of step”) and directly influence the content.
Our global idea is to increase the effectiveness of education, and we started by solving only one pressing problem - the lack of a unified schedule platform. Today even the term “ EdTech ” exists.”, Denoting similar IT projects aimed at improving the conditions of education.
Now the work system looks like this:
The idea of creating such a service has been visiting me for a long time: often, coming home from work in the evening I had to call friends and find out which couples are tomorrow or what is the current week number? So I thought that it would be much more convenient to use the electronic schedule (for example, at night it is already difficult to contact one of the students, while the site is always available).
So, having discussed all aspects with the team, we set about implementing. The launch of the test site took place on April Fools' Day - April 1, 2013. Testing took place at my alma mater - Samara State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering (SSASU).
Initially, the site had a very simple functionality, which was limited to: a catalog of universities, schedules of study groups, email-subscription to changes in the schedule and the text form of the error message.
The rights for those who can make changes to the schedules are established directly by the university: depending on the chosen scheme, the editors may be university employees, elders or all students.
For a month and a half of work, while the students had not yet gone on vacation, many reviews and tips for improving the system were received. We realized that the project is still raw and got down to business.
September 1, 2013for some reason, on Sunday , we gathered all the staff in the officelaunched a new version of the site, added a number of new features, the key of which is a quick search for your group and online timetables for teachers.
On October 1 (exactly by the half year of Pashka) we released the VKontakte application (thanks to eluninm ). The application is an iframe (in which the site works) with a number of improvements, such as user authorization, subscription using the VK user id, inviting friends, posting on the wall. The notifications themselves were issued in the form of messages “Your schedule has changed!” That come from Robot Pashka.
On October 25, the application was added to the Vkontakte catalog. In the first 2 days, 2,000 people installed the application. This is where our “wiki catalog” came in handy, a catalog of cities, universities, faculties, etc., into which anyone can add an entry, and it will immediately be visible on the site. Hundreds of cities were added per day, among which there were such “cities” as Russia and Belarus.
We realized that the current staff we can’t cope with manually adding schedules to the site, so an open online editor was released on November 8th. The editor, previously available only to our employees, registered elders and university staff, has become publicly available. Now anyone can fill out their schedule. Depending on the scheme chosen by the university, the schedule immediately becomes available on the site or goes to moderation, after which it also becomes available on the site, in mobile applications and in the VK application. This solution is convenient for everyone: students do not need to wait for our editors to get to the schedule of their group; we now have the opportunity to concentrate on the support and technical development of the project.
Today, January 20, we launched the long-awaited iPhone and Android applications. Now the main request of our users has been fulfilled.
How good the applications turned out is up to you to judge. In the near future, we will set ourselves 2 tasks:
1) Make a normal mobile version of the site that will work with other mobile devices, including tablets;
2) Modify mobile applications based on user feedback.
If you are a student, teacher or university employee, it will be very interesting for us to hear your opinion, advice and ideas on the development of the project. You can also add the schedule of your group or faculty, and join the testing of mobile and Vkontakte applications. We are pleased to talk with university administrators about the possibility of integrating the system through the API. Participation in the project, of course, is free.
You can contact us using the VKontakte group , we will be glad to chat!
Now the system works in dozens of universities across the country (from Kaliningrad to Krasnoyarsk). The system is used by thousands of students. Every day we receive dozens of reviews, schedules and updates to them. We constantly communicate with students, employees and heads of universities, all together share experience and develop, this is perhaps the most interesting part of our project.
Thank you all so much for your support!
Yes, for more than six months now we have been working on Robot Pashka, a project of online university timetables. The article will focus on our history of the development and development of the project. The article is more general than applied and timed to launch mobile versions of schedules for iPhone and Android.
Robot Pashka is a friend and student assistant. Pashka studies only four and five because he knows his schedule and does not miss pairs. Here is his site - robotpashka.ru
Project Overview
Our project is a database of online timetables at universities. Besides the fact that you can simply view your schedule on the site, you can subscribe to the schedule of your study group and be aware of all changes. When the schedule changes, an automatic notification is sent to all students of the group via email, Vkontakte messages, and mobile push notifications.
Thus, the project allows you to stay abreast of your schedule anywhere, monitor its changes (for example, “change of step”) and directly influence the content.
Our global idea is to increase the effectiveness of education, and we started by solving only one pressing problem - the lack of a unified schedule platform. Today even the term “ EdTech ” exists.”, Denoting similar IT projects aimed at improving the conditions of education.
Now the work system looks like this:
A bit of history
The idea of creating such a service has been visiting me for a long time: often, coming home from work in the evening I had to call friends and find out which couples are tomorrow or what is the current week number? So I thought that it would be much more convenient to use the electronic schedule (for example, at night it is already difficult to contact one of the students, while the site is always available).
So, having discussed all aspects with the team, we set about implementing. The launch of the test site took place on April Fools' Day - April 1, 2013. Testing took place at my alma mater - Samara State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering (SSASU).
Initially, the site had a very simple functionality, which was limited to: a catalog of universities, schedules of study groups, email-subscription to changes in the schedule and the text form of the error message.
The rights for those who can make changes to the schedules are established directly by the university: depending on the chosen scheme, the editors may be university employees, elders or all students.
For a month and a half of work, while the students had not yet gone on vacation, many reviews and tips for improving the system were received. We realized that the project is still raw and got down to business.
September 1, 2013
On October 1 (exactly by the half year of Pashka) we released the VKontakte application (thanks to eluninm ). The application is an iframe (in which the site works) with a number of improvements, such as user authorization, subscription using the VK user id, inviting friends, posting on the wall. The notifications themselves were issued in the form of messages “Your schedule has changed!” That come from Robot Pashka.
On October 25, the application was added to the Vkontakte catalog. In the first 2 days, 2,000 people installed the application. This is where our “wiki catalog” came in handy, a catalog of cities, universities, faculties, etc., into which anyone can add an entry, and it will immediately be visible on the site. Hundreds of cities were added per day, among which there were such “cities” as Russia and Belarus.
We realized that the current staff we can’t cope with manually adding schedules to the site, so an open online editor was released on November 8th. The editor, previously available only to our employees, registered elders and university staff, has become publicly available. Now anyone can fill out their schedule. Depending on the scheme chosen by the university, the schedule immediately becomes available on the site or goes to moderation, after which it also becomes available on the site, in mobile applications and in the VK application. This solution is convenient for everyone: students do not need to wait for our editors to get to the schedule of their group; we now have the opportunity to concentrate on the support and technical development of the project.
Today, January 20, we launched the long-awaited iPhone and Android applications. Now the main request of our users has been fulfilled.
How good the applications turned out is up to you to judge. In the near future, we will set ourselves 2 tasks:
1) Make a normal mobile version of the site that will work with other mobile devices, including tablets;
2) Modify mobile applications based on user feedback.
Participation in the project
If you are a student, teacher or university employee, it will be very interesting for us to hear your opinion, advice and ideas on the development of the project. You can also add the schedule of your group or faculty, and join the testing of mobile and Vkontakte applications. We are pleased to talk with university administrators about the possibility of integrating the system through the API. Participation in the project, of course, is free.
You can contact us using the VKontakte group , we will be glad to chat!
Total
Now the system works in dozens of universities across the country (from Kaliningrad to Krasnoyarsk). The system is used by thousands of students. Every day we receive dozens of reviews, schedules and updates to them. We constantly communicate with students, employees and heads of universities, all together share experience and develop, this is perhaps the most interesting part of our project.
Thank you all so much for your support!