Julia Hardy
Arts, Entertainment & Technology Editor
Sure, practically every high school in the country has a website. But an app? The high school is on its way to being one of the first schools to accomplish this feat with the creation of a mobile version of the nchscourant.com.
According to Technology Team advisor Cathy Swan, the Tech Team decided to make this app because of its simplicity compared to the more complicated process of creating game applications. “[The] Tech Team has been interested in writing apps for several years, so when the Courant approached us to create an app, we immediately accepted,” she said.
Ms. Swan then contacted Tommy Swanhaus, a co-founder of the film website, The Freestyle Life, to help make the app, which he immediately agreed to. “I believe that I was able to become as successful as I am with The Freestyle Life through the help of others,” he said. “For that reason, I believe in giving back to the community and I felt honored to help create an app.”
The team used a Google program called GoMo to create the app. This program is specially designed to help convert a website to a mobile version without a lot of programming. “We’re currently using a WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get, so no coding involved) interface right now,” sophomore Tech Team member Emily Serven said.
Entering the new territory of creating an app posed challenges for everyone involved in the process. For Emily, working together with others proved the most difficult part. “I’m learning a lot about working in teams, since I usually work solo,” she said.
“Many of our projects are individual or small group, but this was truly a full team effort,” Ms. Swan agreed.
Nevertheless, the Tech Team, Tommy and his assistant Peter Bouloukos consider the experience to be positive overall. “My favorite part of this has been understanding everyone’s special talents and combining them to create the final product,” Mr. Swanhaus said.
The mobile version for the Courant is now accessible on any device using the same URL as normal. Though it is currently just a simplified version of the Courant website for smaller screens, there are hopes to get it into the Apple App Store and to add features like the daily schedule of class meetings in later versions.
