As part of a senior project in an upper
level Computer Science class Cecil Rappold and John Lilly decided they wanted
to create an application that students at Marshall and possibly other schools could
use. The app would do everything from mapping out a student’s route from one
class to the next, to turning their phone to silent during class to stop any
interruptions.
Cecil Rappold says they wanted to provide students with something
that could help in many ways.
“Based on the phones GPS location it
will remind you, like if you’re in Charleston it will remind you an hour and 20
minutes before your class, but if you’re on campus it’ll remind you 15 minutes
before class so it gives you that extra window to come to class and find a
parking spot and everything and it also will integrate with Google Calendar to
you can build your actual schedule day-by-day,” Rappold said.
The app is called the Marshall
University Buddy. The two students have aspirations for what the having the app
on their resume could provide. John Lilly wants to go into development and
Rappold wants to go into management. Lilly says when it came time to come up
with an idea it seemed natural to develop an app that would help students with
their campus lives.
“Actually a lot of the craze now is
mobile development for applications and I just thought it would be cool to have
a mobile application that would help students here and I actually like
programming a lot and the mobile development is pretty much where it’s at, so I
want do continue doing this in the future,” Lilly said.
The app won’t be available for download
in the android app store till the end of the spring semester. It’s not the
first application developed by colleges in the state. Marshall and West Virginia University
have developed applications mainly for iPhone and iPad use. Rappold says their
app offers features that you can’t get, for the most part, from other ones.
“The iPhone app has calendar of events
and things like that, but that’s not what our app really does, it’s more for
function rather than information, ours will benefit students, professors and we
hope to be able to develop where if you have an SGA senate meeting you can map
where that is and add into Google Calendar,” Rappold said.
The pair say that so far the response
has been encouraging. They’ve heard from professors that say when it is
available they’ll list the app on their syllabus so android users know to download
the application. Lilly says he just hopes they can get the word out about the
application.
“The hardest part will be getting people
to realize it’s there, it’s not too hard to get stuff on the Android Market you
just have to pay a $25 developer fee, all I have to do is upload it and then
you can either make it free or put advertisements on it depending on just what
you want, but it’s not too hard to get it on the market,” Lilly said.
Their instructor for the Senior Projects
course is Paulus Wahjudi. He says the app will be useful.
“Computer Science itself is an applied
science and we’re here to support other schools of science and chemistry and
things like that and one of the things I came up with is, it would be nice if
that phone they have is smart enough, well why isn’t it smart enough to turn
off on its own when it’s time for class and also help them find where there
classes are,” Wahjudi said.
Wahjudi says they always want to make
the senior project useful to the student.
“We always strive with the senior
project for them to be able to put it on their resume, something that will be
valuable to them, so if you look at all the senior projects it’s something
that’s being used these days, it’s not something that’s no longer being used
and is no longer valid, so it’s something the students can go up to their
employer and say here it is,” Wahjudi said.
The pair presented their project at
Research Day at the State Capitol last week.