CSC 223 Project Ideas

From CSWiki

These are the project ideas that were discussed on September 28. See also the CSC 223: Front Door.

Contents 1 Course Planner 1.1 Inspiration 1.2 Customers 1.3 Features 2 MathLAN info 2.1 Inspiration 2.2 Customers 2.3 Use cases 2.4 Features 3 Student Calendar 3.1 Inspiration 3.2 Customers 3.3 Features 4 Other ideas

Course Planner

Inspiration

I'm thinking something along a class schedule assister. Something that when you choose classes, it fills up spaces on a planner-like interface. Plug it into the registrar's office so that you can search by time, title, major, or availability. Have it kick an error if two or more classes occupy the same time slot. Give it, in as much as possible, a year/semester variable for classes that only show up every other year, and make it possible to plan years in advance. Probably gonna need something that spits out a print/save friendly format. I'm thinking that would be something extremely useful come pre-registration or 4-year plan time.

My other idea is an interactive schedule builder for college courses. There would be a browser for available classes, where clicking on one brings up more detailed information, along with a schedule viewer. If the user selects two classes for the same timeslot, they would show up in red, but the user would still be allowed to save the schedule. The tricky part of this application would be the interface for uploading course information. It would have to be easy to use and smart.

As a student I think it would be interesting to create an updated, more flexible course locater usable for the school. The problem is the current system is not flexible enough (for instance, you can choose to look at 100 level courses in a certain division, but to look at 100 AND 200 level courses you need to use up two slots, one for each level.)

Also, it may be interesting to add some other features, such as including keywords for courses, in case a student is interested in seeing if there are any classes on a certain topic (as opposed to having to look by division) it may also be useful to note whether a certain class is required for the major, not required, or semi-required (such as when you have to choose between two different courses).

There are numerous other features as well (being able to save a certain list of courses in a text file through the application, as opposed to having to type it all out on your own) possibly even including a way to show a map of the time slots that classes are in, so it's easier to see conflicts and work with the schedule by picking certain classes and having them show up on the "map" at the times they take up.

Customers

• Grinnell Students
• Registrar
• Advisors?
• Instructors?

Features

1. Graphical interface for course schedule
2. Shows time conflicts
3. Side-by-side comparisons

MathLAN info

Inspiration

For the big project, i'd like to re-create the web-page interface that shows who's using what computer in the academic buildings. Maybe we could snazz it up a little while we're at it? Or maybe there's something that we could make that would be useful to alumni, since i'm about to be one of those!

Customers

• CS students
• Friends of CS students
• Mr. Stone
• Alumni stalkers (NOT!)

Use cases

1. Where am I logged in?
2. Where are my friends logged in?
3. Where should I ssh to?

Features

1. Show names of computers.
2. Show computer status & load.

Student Calendar

Inspiration

I've been thinking about this project for a bit and finally pulled in everything that I had earlier tonight while talking to one of my friends. There is a campus memo, but it's extremely user-unfriendly and unpretty. I think that students could really use a Plans-ish web-based calendar to manage student events--talks and presentations are great, but performances, games, parties, and generally student-led things are phenomenal. Group or organizational "administrators" (with status more similar to that of specialized moderators) could post, edit, or delete events and users could view all events, only those to which they subscribe (a la RSS/Atom/whatever feeds), or certain subsets of all by keyword. So the clients would be anyone associated with Grinnell, just like with GrinnellPlans, but the key would be that clients would have certain statuses (such as "Student" versus "Faculty") and that "administrators" could specify which kinds of users would be allowed to view events.

Customers

• Anyone interested in campus events
  • Students
  • Faculty
  • Staff
  • Alumni
  • Townspeople
• Group administrators (e.g., Swing)

Features

1. Visual interface
2. Subscriptions
3. Search

Other ideas

There are also some other ideas that were not extensively discussed in class.

I would like to create a recipe database that is searchable by multiple parameters, not just text matches, to ease common tasks such as coordinating times and temperatures, planning a meal around dietary restrictions, and finding recipes for ingredients on hand. I have never encountered software or websites that allow this, and I would personally find it incredibly useful. I think other people would as well, particularly when meal planners often also work full-time and need a better way to plan than manually searching through recipes for those that meet their requirements. I would also like to support "near matches" if a particular search returns no results - for example, if you search for something that bakes at 375 degrees and nothing is returned, it would be convenient to have a list of near matches that cook at 350 or 400 degrees. There is nothing more frustrating that finding out later that there was a perfect recipe if only you had searched for a slightly different value.

The computer labs in various dorms all have printers. Often, these printers do not work properly. Either they are jammed, they are out of ink, or something else has happened to them. Sometimes printers can go for several days without being fixed. It would be useful for students to have a simple website they could look at to determine at any given time which printers were working and which weren't. Other useful features would include showing students where printers can be found (Yesterday, I found a brand new printer in Rose, in a location that I would never have expected.), and also potentially how backed up they are. If a printer is in the process of churning out a 100-page reading, it might as well be broken. To the best of my knowledge, there is currently no way for even ITS to regularly check which printers are broken. They could also use the website to track which printers are in trouble. (Ex: If a printer is listed as broken for over two hours, an e-mail is automatically sent to ITS notifying them.)

A web-based classroom suite, complete with multimedia, google document applets, organizers, classroom lectures, instant messaging and video chat. This might come in handy for students who are off-campus or have trouble waking up in the morning. As a benchmark, we could use Pioneerweb's Blackboard, but build in a more usable format.

I really like the idea of a web app which matches used book owners to used book purchasers, much like the one described in the article for this assignment. I think that I can come up with something better, though.

I think it would be cool to set up a sort of play-by-e-mail chess website (of sorts) where users submit their moves and a "judge" will display the position and wait for the other user to imput moves. On a similar note, another idea I had would be to make the same thing, but for a different board game I like, Deluxe Diplomacy.

One problem my family often runs into is that they have relatively large files (too big for email) like a short video clip or folder full of pictures that they would like to send me. Rather than scp-ing through the terminal which is complicated and requires that both computers be on and have consistent IP addresses, they could upload these files to a server, where each user, say a Grinnell student, would be able to log in with a password to a personal repository of ~100 MB to store these files until they can be picked up on the other end. Each repository holder would be able to authorize other or new users to upload and download to and from their repository. It would also be nice if this application could send an email notification or publish an rss feed and have an accompanying widget that alerts people when they have packages to download.

Since many new students and faculty move to Grinnell every year, a map of downtown Grinnell which display stores and restaurants in might be helpful. However, Instead of having store owners~R description about their stores or restaurants, we will have actual customers~R review(what is best dish there, etc.) and information.

Chains of love planning tool.