Calculating the time left in class, students twiddle their thumbs and tap their feet impatiently. But now, with the release of the Trinity Prep app, students have, at their fingertips, the exact number of minutes until the school bell rings.
For the past year, sophomore Dominic Martinez and junior Ricky Woodruff worked on the development of a Trinity Prep app, and with the beginning of the year came the official launch on the App Store and the Google Play Store. It includes weekly news feeds, events and the daily lunch menu.
Last year, Woodruff was enrolled in Honors Computer Programming C++ with Computer Science Teacher Susan Frederick, and he decided to create an app with alum Dax Borde since he was beyond the scope of the class. In an independent study, he created the base version of the app while Martinez focused on the Android version.
Starting from scratch, Woodruff learned several programming languages including Swift, which is the scripting language for creating iOS apps. Together, Martinez and Woodruff envisioned the structural aspects and the features of the app, but they encountered many challenges.
“When I first made the news feed, it didn’t work,” Woodruff said. “So I had to search up online how to make a news feed and embed it within the app. It also had several glitches that were fixed by various updates.”
The most popular features of the app are its ability to tell how many minutes are left in each class period and the daily schedule.
“Basically, we had to manually insert each schedule on the app,” Martinez said. “We had to put in the minutes from midnight from which the classes start and compare the current time to what period we are in.”
Woodruff and Martinez are currently working on updating the app to meet the demands of our tech-savvy student body.
“I think the app is doing quite well so far,” Woodruff said. “We already have over 550 download and 5,000 hits on it. The number is going to rise once we add several new components to it.”
Over the summer, Woodruff took a virtual reality and graphics class and believed his knowledge can be a valuable asset in the processing of the app.
In a 2013 Campus Computing Survey, 79 percent colleges have instituted an app for their student agenda. According to University Business Magazine, students at Florida State University have noted that they have a stronger sense of safety due to notifications regarding weather patterns and crimes nearby.
“I think the weather bug should be included on the app,” sophomore Andrew Hefley said. “It is connected to the Trinity siren and shows the number of minutes left from the last lightning strike. It would allow athletes to know when the fields are open for use without seeking administrators.”
The app is not only restricted to our student body.
“Even my parents use the app,” junior Delaney McLinden said. “[My mom] likes to know how much longer there is in class and when school ends. She loves how everything is on one centralized location without digging through the Trinity website.”
Teachers have also been using the app quite frequently.
“The app is especially useful to me since I am able to allocate time better throughout class,” new Social Studies teacher Brian Brown said. “I use it as a guide to distribute the material that I am teaching.”
Because of the success of the app, students have encouraged Woodruff to create more apps in the future.
“I know some people want us to add games to the app, but we’ll see about that,” Woodruff said. “It might be a separate app. They want to us to do Pokémon Go with teachers, but I’ll just keep that idea in the back of my mind.”
